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A study by Time magazine tells us that the average office worker is interrupted more than 50 times each day!
Four out of five interruptions are not urgent and usually unnecessary. While the problem is more acute in the office than in the warehouse, interruptions are a fact of working life. The result of most interruptions is a loss of focus and a slowing of progress. Interruptions cannot be eliminated, but they can be identified and controlled. One way to start is a survey, and then use the data to minimize interruption.
Ask each member of your office team to keep records for a three day period. Each time a task is interrupted, the survey should include the source of the interruption, the reason it happened, and the time of day. Then the data should be analyzed to determine why the events happened and who were the originators. From this analysis, steps can be taken to control the number of occurrences.
One preventive step is to establish a “quiet time” – one or two hours at a specified time of day when all telephones are moved to voicemail, using this time for workers to complete tasks that are frequently disrupted because of interruptions. Another approach is to channel all telephone and email messages to a receptionist who then intercepts the interrupter to allow the issue to be handled without a second interruption.
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