Workstation: Messages Galore, but No Time to Think

Then, in the 1990s, came e-mail, and things were never the same. Besides delivering a serious blow to the sellers of those pieces of paper, e-mail made communicating with people incredibly — and, at first, delightfully — easy.

Now, a few decades later, people constantly complain that their e-mail in-boxes are unmanageable. And many more technologies have joined the workplace party. We can now use cellphones, texts, instant messaging, text messaging, social media, corporate intranets and cloud applications to communicate at work.

Something may have been lost as we adopted these new communication tools: the ability to concentrate.

“Nobody can think anymore because they’re constantly interrupted,” said Leslie Perlow, a Harvard Business School professor and author of “Sleeping With Your Smartphone.” “Technology has enabled this expectation that we always be on.” Workers fear the repercussions that could result if they are unavailable, she said.

The intermingling of work and personal life adds to the onslaught, as people communicate about personal topics during the workday, and about work topics when they are at home.

According to a 2011 article in The Ergonomics Open Journal, electronic communication tools can demand constant switching, which contributes to a feeling of “discontinuity” in the workplace. On the other hand, people sometimes deliberately introduce interruptions into their day as a way to reduce boredom and to socialize, the article said.

We’re only beginning to understand the workplace impact of new communication tools. The use of such technology in the office is “less rational than we would like to think,” said Steve Whittaker a professor of human-computer interaction at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Sometimes, “it’s one person who’s an evangelist,” he said. “They will start using a particular thing, and they will bring other people along with them.”

More tech-oriented types might favor the latest new communication “toy,” while others, like me, are less enthusiastic. In the name of simplicity, I even try to avoid instant messaging. But I also can’t help worrying that I am missing out.

Plenty of workplace advice focuses on how we, as individuals, can manage our technology, but in many cases, this is a collective, team-level issue, Professor Perlow said.

As Professor Whittaker put it, “We haven’t stabilized our regular practices,” and these may need to be negotiated among workers.

It’s important to distinguish between collaborative and one-on-one communication, he said. Cloud-based systems are meant for sharing and editing documents, and they can enable people in different cities to work together in real time. Internal social media pages can be useful for seeking and sharing knowledge.

But when one person wants to communicate with another privately, e-mail remains the go-to method, Professor Whittaker said. That’s why it is nearly universal, despite a general yearning for something better.

To lessen the disruptive nature of e-mail and other messages, teams need to discuss how to alter their work process to allow blocks of time where they can disconnect entirely, Professor Perlow said. “I don’t think you can do it without leadership support,” she added.

MAYBE more managers, consulting with their teams, need to set up clear guidelines for communication. When is it best to use the cloud? When is it best to use e-mail, or instant messaging? And when is it acceptable, even preferable, to turn off all technology? Not that managers need to be dictators, but a little clarity can lead to much more productivity.

Making it a priority to learn how to use the latest tools more effectively is a good idea, too. For example, how do those filters that help prioritize messages really work?

And let’s never forget the value of face-to-face, or voice-to-voice, communication. An actual unrehearsed conversation — requiring sustained attention and spontaneous reactions — may be old-fashioned, but it just might turn up something new.

Workstation: More Companies Are Outsourcing Their Human-Resources Work

It used to be that H.R. was a single, physical place that workers could visit — to pick up a form, ask a question, seek advice, lodge a complaint. Now if a company still has a stand-alone H.R. office, it’s probably much smaller than it used to be. If workers need help, they may have to call an “800” number, consult a Web portal or use a software program.

The outsourcing of H.R. has accelerated over the last decade and will continue to do so, said Lisa Rowan, a research vice president at IDC, the market research firm. While some companies may entrust their H.R. needs to a single outside firm, it’s more common to parcel out functions to a range of outside providers, she said.

Outsourcing allows companies to offload work that isn’t part of their core business. It also saves money. But some H.R. experts are concerned that the trend has gone too far, to the point that employees are suffering in areas like training and career development, and that employers are losing crucial business opportunities.

If you look at the wide-ranging traditional duties of human resources, it’s no wonder that companies are seeking outside help. “H.R. is supposed to be responsible for finding, developing, retaining and training the best people,” Suzanne Lucas, author of a blog called the Evil HR Lady, said in an e-mail. It can also be responsible for benefits, compensation, employee and labor relations, business partners, data collection and legal issues.

Outsourcing firms can take up various tasks, from payroll to benefits to recruiting, to free up a client to focus on its strengths, said Don Weinstein, senior vice president for product management at ADP, a large H.R. outsourcing firm. The new health care reform legislation, for example, will have a big impact on employers, some of whom may be overwhelmed by its complexities. Firms like ADP have expertise in areas like this, and thus relieve a big burden, Mr. Weinstein said.

In the last 10 years, the focus of human resources has shifted toward legal compliance and data collection, said Ms. Lucas, who now lives in Switzerland but has 10 years of H.R. experience in the United States. At a company that doesn’t have the means to hire specialists, she said, outsourcing can allow it to “gain vast resources for a relatively small amount of money.”

Problems arise if outside vendors are concerned mainly with maximizing their income and lowering their costs, resulting in “low flexibility and poor service,” Ms. Lucas said. It’s in the best interest of employees at this kind of vendor “to provide as little service as possible,” she said. And at such a vendor’s call center, she said, “I don’t even have to care about morale at your site, because it doesn’t affect my day.”

(Mr. Weinstein asserted that ADP is able to maintain high-quality, individualized service through its call centers.)

MS. LUCAS said that if human-resources professionals work for the same company as the employees they serve, their interests are more closely aligned. If your performance is good, “the company will make more money,” she explained. “A better-performing company means a better bonus for me, a happier workplace, and fewer problems all around.”

But many internal H.R. functions have been “cut to the bone,” said Peter Cappelli, a management professor and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Therefore, the idea that companies will be more strategic about human resources after they outsource “requires some heroic assumptions,” said Professor Cappelli, author of “Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs.” Supervisors may be able to take over some important roles, but many of the people who were experts at recruiting, training and career development have been laid off, he said. So is it any surprise, he added, that companies complain that they can’t find good people?

“The world has moved toward self-service,” he said, and that puts the emphasis on technology, and on information over advice. Sometimes, he said, “there’s literally no one to talk to.”

Other times, there’s the call center. There, Ms. Lucas said, you may find someone who is reading from a script — and often that’s enough. But when your problem is complex, it can be hard or downright impossible to have it solved, she said.

“The best outsourcing leaves some competent H.R. staff as employees,” she said. “When the call center can’t answer a question, they can refer you to the in-house person. It saves money and still provides individualized expertise for employees.”

Workstation: Pen and Paper, Still Practical in the Office - Workstation

Paper, says the productivity expert David Allen, is “in your face.” Its physical presence can be a goad to completing tasks, whereas computer files can easily be hidden and thus forgotten, he said. Some of his clients are returning to paper planners for this very reason, he added.

Mr. Allen, the author of “Getting Things Done,” does much of his writing on a computer, but there are still times when writing with a fountain pen on a notepad “allows me to get my head in the right place,” he said.

Paper printouts also serve an important function, he said. For long texts, a printout can allow a reader to better understand relationships between sections of writing. And paper handouts are still a presence at meetings partly because they are useful for taking notes.

Reading a long document on paper rather than on a computer screen helps people “better understand the geography of the argument contained within,” said Richard H. R. Harper, a principal researcher for Microsoft in Cambridge, England, and co-author with Abigail J. Sellen of “The Myth of the Paperless Office,” published in 2001.

Today’s workers are often navigating through multiple objects in complex ways and creating new documents as well, Mr. Harper said. Using more than one computer screen can be helpful for all this cognitive juggling. But when workers are going back and forth between points in a longer document, it can be more efficient to read on paper, he said.

A study released in 1997 showed that people’s comprehension is superior when they read texts on paper as opposed to online, Mr. Harper said. That finding, of course, doesn’t consider the vast improvements in screen technology that have occurred since then, among them e-readers.

Mr. Harper is currently doing research on e-readers, which are now used mostly for leisure reading. In the future, office workers might make more use of e-readers “alongside other devices for reading and creation, and this will add to the spread of screen collateral on the desk” while not necessarily making reading more efficient, he said.

STEVE LEVEEN, co-founder and C.E.O. of Levenger, maintains that digital technology is better for socializing and sharing, while paper is best for quiet contemplation. His company is in the business of promoting paper as an aesthetic experience, offering high-end notebooks, journals and pens, even as it expands to sell items like laptop desks and smartphone cases.

Paper, Mr. Leveen said, “can be a luscious and beautiful thing — the way we savor fine food and wine, we can savor paper and ink and what it does for us.”

Paper reminds us that “we’re physical beings, despite having to contend with an increasingly virtual world,” he said. People complain that writing by hand is slow, but that can be good for thinking and creating, he said: “It slows us down to think and to contemplate and to revise and recast.”

Computer styluses, too, can “force you to think more carefully about which words you put down and how to plan what you say,” Mr. Harper said. But a stylus can’t replace the physical experience of pen on paper, he said.

A stylus has the advantage of cutting down on the heedless use of paper, as does typing and reading on screens. And that’s good news for trees.

As a nation, “we’re doing more with less paper, and recycling more of what we do use,” said Joel Makower, chairman and executive editor of the GreenBiz Group, which aims to help businesses become more environmentally responsible.

Mr. Makower doesn’t do a great deal of writing on paper because he has trouble reading his own handwriting. And he is more organized with his computer files than with paper.

“I don’t know where to put things in the real world,” he said, “but I know exactly where to put them on my computer.”

But, he said, he knows that some people are just the opposite, and that there is still a place for paper in the office. Although he conducts almost all his work digitally, he still prints out his group’s “State of Green Business” report — more than 80 pages this year — for proofreading.

“I can do a pretty good job on the screen, but there’s something about reading it in hard copy” Mr. Makower said, that makes it easier for him to understand.