Context switching in the modern workplace - revenge of the collaboration tools?

Context switching among multiple business applications and computing devices is one of the most pervasive, debilitating and insidious sources of IT frustration in the modern workplace. Digital collaboration tools were supposed to reduce the impact of context switching and boost productivity but have they really delivered on that promise?

There are plenty of distractions in the modern workplace. Knowledge workers routinely employ dozens of SaaS applications to perform their jobs. A 2017 study discovered that enterprises operating in a wide variety of industries typically employed 900 to 1200 SaaS applications. HR and Marketing teams relied upon 90 applications on average while Finance teams employed 60. It’s quite likely – probably certain – that these numbers have increased over the past three years.

Knowledge workers access applications through a wide variety of physical devices such as laptops, tablet computers, Chromebooks and smartphones. It’s not uncommon for office workers to display two or more applications on multiple desktop monitors while keeping their smartphones within easy reach of their laptop keyboards.

Finally, the open floor plans adopted in many modern offices generate a continuous stream of visual and auditory distractions that can further erode an individual’s mental concentration. Some companies install white noise generators in communal workspaces to override random noise. Some workers employ personal headphones to eliminate random noise as well. 

All of these factors undermine the productivity of office-based knowledge workers. The proliferation of SaaS applications and computing devices, in particular, have given rise to the phenomenon of context switching.

What is context switching?

The term ‘context switch’ was originally developed to describe the ability of a computer operating system to store the state of a process or thread for execution at a subsequent point in time, allowing multiple processes to share a single CPU. In today’s world, context switching refers to something quite different. It’s used to describe the mental transitions that knowledge workers experience in manipulating multiple applications and devices to perform a series of tasks or activities. The following studies dramatically underscore the dimensions of this phenomenon.

• A 2018 study found that knowledge workers employ 60 applications and 4 collaboration tools on average. Seven in ten workers toggle among these apps as often as 10 times per hour. 
• A 2019 study discovered that office workers receive 120 business-related emails per day and send 40. These numbers exclude personal email traffic. An earlier 2016 study found that individuals required 64 seconds on average to return to the same work pace after an email interruption. 
• Slack statistics released in mid-2019 indicated that the average user was plugged into Slack 9 hours per weekday and spent 90 minutes actively processing messages.
• A recent 2020 study reported that knowledge workers spent 45% of their time performing their primary job responsibilities and roughly a third of their time on email, wasteful meetings, nonessential tasks and other interruptions. This is consistent with a variety of other studies that indicate that knowledge workers routinely spend less than half their time discharging their primary responsibilities.

As discussed elsewhere, IT systems and support procedures can impact employee experience in many different ways. Even though IT groups rarely receive direct complaints about context switching it is one of the most pervasive, debilitating and insidious sources of IT friction and frustration in the modern workplace. Digital collaboration tools were supposed to reduce the impact of constant context switching and boost productivity but have they really? Is it possible that they’re actually making the problem worse?

Collaboration tools defined

The term ‘collaboration tool’ is used quite broadly within IT to refer to a variety of applications that individuals use to work interactively and interdependently to achieve a common objective or outcome. Collaboration tools can generally be grouped into one of three functional domains.

Interpersonal communication tools

Email, messaging and videoconferencing are the primary communication tools employed by knowledge workers. Microsoft O365 (and the newer MS Teams product) and Gmail are the most commonly used email applications. Slack, MS Teams, Salesforce Chatter, Facebook Workplace, LinkedIn and Twitter are ubiquitous messaging tools. Videoconferencing is commonly enabled through the use of Zoom, Webex, Skype/MS Teams, Google Meet and GoToMeeting.

Interactive work execution tools

These tools enable two or more individuals to work interactively on a specific task. For example, Google Docs, Confluence and Quip are commonly used for document co-authoring. Box, Dropbox and MS OneDrive/Teams are frequently used for file sharing. Figma is a popular engineering tool for collaborative interface design. Air, MURAL, Conceptboard, Miro and Lucidchart serve as whiteboard platforms that can be used for diagramming, brainstorming, problem-solving and planning. AppDynamics contains a virtual war room feature that teams can use to interactively review logs and analyze application performance problems. These are just a few examples. Note that most of these tools support both synchronous (i.e. simultaneous) and asynchronous interactions between two or more individuals working on a common task or work product.

Work management tools

There are a wide variety of tools that teams use to define, sequence, prioritize and monitor tasks. A partial list of leading products includes Smartsheet, Monday.com, Trello, Asana, Workfront, Jira, Basecamp, Wrike and Clarizen. Some of these tools are primarily used as informational dashboards to track the scope and progress of individual tasks while others provide not-so-subtle guidance to team members regarding their personal priorities and pending deadlines. Most of these tools can generate alerts or notifications to individual team members if delivery timelines, service level commitments or work product quality are in jeopardy.

The boundaries between these three functional domains can be fuzzy at times. Several tool vendors provide capabilities in more than one domain but most are strongly grounded in one of these categories.

Are collaboration tools part of the solution or part of the problem?

In a perfect world an enterprise would standardize on one tool to address its needs for email communication, messaging, document co-authoring, project management, etc. In a slightly imperfect world, multiple tools might be procured for the same general purpose if individual tools were customized in some fashion to address the unique needs of individual functional teams. In reality, most large enterprises have failed to establish or enforce standards regarding the acquisition of collaboration tools. Consequently, multiple tools possessing largely duplicative capabilities are in use within many (most?) companies. This may not pose a problem for an employee with a narrowly defined set of job responsibilities that interacts with a limited number of coworkers on a daily basis. However, it can be hugely counterproductive for an employee with broader responsibilities whose performance is critically dependent upon colleagues in other teams.

In practice, many knowledge workers are engaged in activities and projects that involve multiple teams of co-workers. These activities may be cross functional in nature (e.g. Marketing, Sales and Finance) or they may span multiple departments within a single function (e.g. Product Marketing, Field Marketing and Demand Generation). Individuals who routinely work with cross functional teams or related departments will inevitably be required to use the collaboration tools that that team or department has chosen. Under these circumstances, context switching among multiple collaboration tools actually ends up compounding the productivity problems they were designed to solve! 

Can context switching be conquered?

It’s unlikely that context switching can be eliminated any time in the near future. In fact, modern businesses are headed in exactly the opposite direction. Every enterprise is seeking ways of leveraging technology to accomplish more work with fewer people. In general, the knowledge workers of 2025 or 2030 will be expected to operate across functions and departments on a more frequent basis and are likely to experience even more context switching than we encounter today.

Although it may be impossible to conquer context switching it can be curtailed in three potential ways. First, many vendors operating in the collaboration space are extending their capabilities into adjacent domains, trying to develop more comprehensive solutions for interpersonal communication, work execution and work management. These broader solutions may reduce context switching to a degree but their effectiveness will depend upon the willingness of corporations to eliminate existing tools and standardize on enterprise-wide collaboration solutions. Rationalization of existing collaboration tools is a second important means of reducing some of the time lost to context switching.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the biggest and most effective way of reducing context switching may be found in the nearest mirror – our personal behavior. It won’t matter what email system or messaging tool your company chooses to deploy enterprise-wide if you obsessively check it every 10 minutes. It won’t matter what work execution tools you employ if you compulsively login 10 times per day to see how others have reacted to your ideas or contributions. It won’t matter how many work management tools you use if you activate all their alerting capabilities and accept a steady stream of automated notifications throughout the work day.

Disciplined management of one’s personal time is likely the best remedy for the mentally debilitating effects of constant context switching. Setting aside dedicated time for specific activities and curbing compulsive behaviors will probably produce more mental health benefits and productivity gains than any changes in vendor technology or standardization policies. The ancient Biblical admonition to ‘heal thyself’ first may be the best advice to those suffering from the long term effects of constant context switching!