Workers are spending too long searching

LearningGuide
28/07/2005
's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands

Forty seven percent of workers are spending more than four hours per week searching for information, according to a recent survey carried out by LearningGuide.

LearningGuide, the workplace performance support company, asked visitors to its Web site how much time workers in their organization spent searching for information per week. The results showed that people are spending a large amount of their working time, 32% spending four to five hours per week and 15% spending over five hours, searching for information.

According to LearningGuide’s Alfred Remmits: “Workers are getting bogged down with change and information overload, particularly as a result of new and updated applications, and management is failing to sort it out. Our survey supports other research studies into working patterns that have shown workers often spending between half and one working-day per week finding out how to do things correctly and looking for information. It’s an increasing trend.”

“More training and bigger helpdesks is unlikely to be the answer. Simply pouring more of the scarce training budget into how management has traditionally sorted out knowledge issues, using more courses and e-learning, is unlikely solve this,” added Remmits, who in the last five years has pioneered the use of electronic performance support as a means of resolving user adoption of new processes and applications.

“Workers are less willing to spend time on training courses when queries about working procedures or applications emerge. Quicker, immediate answers are needed. Helpdesks are often overloaded with queries from users who are increasingly learning ‘informally’, turning to co-workers for answers, searching the network and of course clicking on Google.”

Remmits believes that the informal learning, taking place in the workplace, needs greater control and involvement from the traditional training department, so that workers follow their company’s procedures correctly.

Notes to editors

About LearningGuide
LearningGuide provides workplace learning and support solutions that accelerate enterprise application ROI and reduce traditional training, e-learning and support costs. LearningGuide contains its own content authoring and publishing application, LearningGuide Manager, which is used for creating learning and support objects and publishing LearningGuides. LearningGuide customers include Deloitte, Heineken, Novartis, Organon, Boskalis Westminster and TNT.

For further information contact
Rob Clarke
e-mail: rclarke@glaworld.com

Marielle Buijink
e-mail: m.buijink@learningguide.nl