It’s one of the big ironies of modern life: the technology that was supposed to help us work better can sometimes end up reducing our ability to concentrate. While digital connectivity has helped us work more efficiently, it has also placed ever more competing claims on our attention.
“Fragmented attention is the enemy of productivity for business owners and for workers,” says Chris Taylor, host of the Oven Ready HR podcast featured in Personnel Today. He notes that this has serious consequences, especially for employees. “It leads to feelings of achieving very little in their day, leading to job dissatisfaction and ultimately a desire to quit.”
But there doesn’t need to be a trade-off between technology and productivity. After all, workplace technology is typically designed to make life easier and more efficient. The key thing is to be aware of the potential pitfalls.
Distracted from deep work
A useful first step is to draw a distinction between deep work and shallower tasks. Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, has authored several highly acclaimed books exploring this relationship between technology and fragmented attention. In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Newport contrasts cognitively demanding deep work with less demanding shallow work. The former requires intense concentration and is hard to replicate, whereas the latter can be performed while distracted and is easy to replicate. According to Newport, knowledge workers are increasingly expending time and attention on shallow work, such as dealing with email, rather than efforts that require deep thinking.
This can be a particular problem for SMB owners and their employees who often have to cover numerous roles, jumping from one task to another, which makes it harder to find the time for deep work. This is an issue because it is deep work that often generates value, which is why it is regularly referred to in almost magical terms, such as “finding your flow” or “getting into the zone”.
Simplifying is a simple solution
So, if you’re the owner or manager of a small or medium-sized business trying to create a work culture that minimises distractions and helps people to do more of what matters, what options are there?
Creating an environment that encourages deep work can be as simple as consolidating current business technologies. “Too many apps and platforms make it almost impossible for employees to prioritise their workload, leading to feelings of being overwhelmed and burnout,” says Taylor.
“Furthermore, dissemination of critical information and content is made much more difficult when the message and the delivery tech is having to compete with a multitude of other channels.” For example, these might include separate email, social media channels, videoconferencing, instant messaging platforms, phone alerts, comments on shared documents, and shared digital notice boards for dedicated projects.
Streamlining or consolidating the number of platforms and apps your business uses can therefore be transformative. It could mean no more switching between multiple apps continually throughout the workday – and no more needing to remember different usernames and passwords to access them all. “A simplified technology landscape maximises team collaboration and creativity,” says Taylor. “[It] minimises instances of poor internal communication and end-user experience, helps increase productivity and employee wellbeing and supports an agile and hybrid work strategy.”
Do more with less
You might fear that consolidating your technology platforms will require a wholesale overhaul. After all, we’ve all heard of IT projects that were designed to make life easier but resulted in much short-term pain and disruption. However, consolidating the platforms and apps your business uses can often be surprisingly simple when it involves culling things you don’t actually need, or because similar tools can be found bundled in with other services you prefer to use.
Begin by analysing the features included in the business technology packages your organisation already uses. There may be programs you’re unaware of within existing bundles, such as the appointment scheduling, project management and planning tools built into Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Even your cybersecurity needs may be covered: Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes protection for user identities, such as multi-factor authentication, but also email protection to prevent phishing or ransomware attacks, data protection to guarantee only the right users get access to specific files, the ability to manage and protect company and employees’ devices accessing work information as well as detect when they are compromised to automatically remediate it to minimise the impact.
The next step is to eliminate as many overlapping functions and single-use platforms as is feasible. There is no need, for instance, for separate apps for chat, calls, video meetings, file collaboration and shared storage when you can get all of this in one suite with Microsoft 365.
“With the cost pressures that SMBs are facing today, owners and managers should look to extract more value out of the technology solutions they already own, or switch to tools that build in end-to-end security offerings,” says Sarah Armstrong-Smith, chief security adviser at Microsoft UK. “This is an easy path to quick wins, especially if companies can reduce their use of multiple ‘legacy’ technology subscriptions with multiple vendors in the process.”
The company’s dedicated Small Business Resource Centre offers more advice, training, products and tools to help guide your decision-making.
Tangible upsides
Of course, doing more with less isn’t just helpful when trying to combat people’s fragmented attention – it has financial benefits too. These could include fewer software subscriptions and licences to purchase, less training to deliver, and fewer “moving parts” to manage.
“For instance, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is a complete solution with all the tools staff need to operate in a hybrid workplace, but by consolidating all of the apps under a single licence, small businesses can save as much as 50% compared with multiple separate solutions,” says Armstrong-Smith.
And while it can be eye-opening to quantify the potential financial savings, you can’t put a price on the sheer value that can be unleashed within your small business by empowering your employees and yourself to get into that magical flow of doing deep work.
For more on getting the right technology and systems for your SMB, check out the Small Business Resource Centre and other articles in this series on how to reduce the stress of being a small business owner
