Friday Funny: 10 Cool Ways To Fight Productivity Killers

Are your coworkers killing your productivity by being noisy and distracting? You’re not alone. A survey of 90,000 people by architects Gensler found that “the most significant factor in workplace effectiveness is not collaboration, it’s individual focus work.”

Indeed, a recent CareerBuilder survey found that the top 10 productivity killers in the workplace are:

  1. Cellphones/texting
  2. The Internet
  3. Gossip
  4. Social Media
  5. Email
  6. Co-workers dropping by
  7. Meetings
  8. Smoke breaks/snack breaks
  9. Noisy co-workers
  10. Sitting in a cubicle

With so many distractions around, it’s almost surprising any work gets done at all – and sometimes it doesn’t. Productivity killers can lead to negative consequences for the organization, including compromised quality of work, lower morale because other workers have to pick up the slack, negative impact of boss/employee relationship, missed deadlines, and loss in revenue.

What To Do?

It’s no surprise then that providing a peaceful, quiet place to work is a top priority for facility managers, and is a great inspiration for workplace and product designers. Workplace Insight recently compiled a list of 10 interesting solutions to workplace distractions. Some were successful and are still used today. Others? Not so much. Take a look:

1. The Isolator

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2. The Cubicle

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3. The Combi Office

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4. The Clipper

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5. The Oasis

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6. The Modern Work Booth

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7. Headphones

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8. The Clear Signal

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9. The Return of the Helmet

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10. Going Offline

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(All photos courtesy of Workplace Insight)

Click here to read more about these solutions.

If one of these solutions don’t do the trick, consider other ways to mitigate productivity killers. Nearly 3 in 4 employers (74 percent) have taken at least one step, such as blocking certain Internet sites (33 percent) and banning personal calls/cell phone use (23 percent), according to CareerBuilder. Other efforts to mitigate productivity killers include scheduled lunch and break times, monitor emails and Internet use, limit meetings, allow people to telecommute, and have an open space layout instead of cubicles.