Weekend Digest: Avoiding Workplace Distractions

For our weekend business readers:

ARE YOU DISTRACTED AT WORK?
You are not alone.  The Wall Street Journal says distractions in the work place caused from email and constant meetings to everything in-between, has reached epidemic proportions and is hurting the bottom line.

Distraction at the office is hardly new, but as screens multiply and managers push frazzled workers to do more with less, companies say the problem is worsening and is affecting business.

The Journal says open-plan offices coupled with all the other distractions including social-networking “means that workers increasingly scramble to get their ‘real work’ done on the margins, early in the morning or late in the evening.”

All the jumble increases stress, lowers productivity, and interrupts workers on average every three minutes, according to the Journal post.

Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.

So what strategies are some companies using to help stop the distractions and could something as simple as using a telephone more be a cure?  Click on this link to learn more about creative ways companies are trying to unclog the maze of interruptions including something called heads-down time.

HOW TO RECRUIT START-UP TALENT
Have a start-up but finding it difficult to recruit the talent you need? How do you recruit talent when your start-up is still in its infancy, when risk of failure is high and significant compensation isn’t possible just yet?

The Wall Street Journal has some possible answers from experts on solving this tricky but necessary problem including one post that says you should straight-shoot new employees that they have to “drink the Kool-Aid.”

Anyone who joins a start-up at the initial phase must be drinking the Kool-Aid like everyone else. There is little compensation, other than stock in the company. The early players will be the foundation that will grow the company to the point where there is traction, and at that point money can be raised.

For more tips on luring talent to your startup, go to this link.

USA TODAY BUCKS TREND TO CHARGE FOR ONLINE ACCESS
Larry Kramer is the new publisher of USA Today and he says “he’s wants to distinguish USA Today’s coverage from it’s competitors before setting up a paywall.”

In a time when prestigious brands like the New York Times are having trouble creating a paid subscription model that is sustainable, USA Today publisher and MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer, says his paper is not ready to charge its readers for online access.

But why and what unique strategies does he have for possibly deploying a “pay model” in the future?

Go to this link for a video interview to find out what Kramer sees as the future of publishing for his company.

MARKETS ARE SHIFTING FROM PRODUCT TO SOCIAL “EXPERIENCE”
It’s a fact says Forbes and “the market’s evolving needs must be met by evolving products.”

Those needs are increasingly expressed not in the classic focus-groups of yore, but in today’s vibrant social media forums. This fundamentally changes the game between a company and its customers.

Saying it can be a “huge shock” for unprepared companies, Forbes explains what can happen if you are not one of those companies using the social-business solution and strongly advises, by clicking on this link, to read its article on “how to play the social-business game.”

DON’T USE TWITTER? MAYBE YOU SHOULD
Forbes has an interesting post from a contributor who has come up with “Nine Ways You Should Be Using Twitter”.  Here’s part of her logic:

Imagine following only the people who interest you; a world not made up of all of the people you have ever met – like you have on Facebook – but instead a community of people that you have handpicked and would like to know.

Some of her other reasons include research, staying on top of the latest, and of course that all-important networking.

To get the complete list along with practical advice, go to this link.

AWFUL REVIEW FROM GUY FIERI’S NEW YORK RESTAURANT PUT TO TEST
A dreadful New York Times review on Food Channel host Guy Fieri’s New York City restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, has raised quite a bit of eyebrows across the internet for its scorn of the food and drink offered there.

Was the food really as “limp” and “oil-sogged” as the critic Pete Wells claimed? Did the drinks really taste like “a combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde”? Did Fieri’s spiky, bleached hair and Pauly Shore-turned-youth pastor personality inspire so much ire in the Gray Lady’s reviewer that he could no longer separate the man from his food? Surely this place can’t be worse than your average TGI Friday’s. Or could it? I had to find out.

And so the contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek Lifetstyle did just that.

Want his side of it?  Click here for the results.