A Simple Way To Increase Employee Productivity

According to a University of Utah study, you can increase your efficiency (or your employees' efficiency) by 25 percent just by adding a second monitor. With multiple monitors, you can get more done since you aren't minimizing and maximizing all day long. Therefore, adding monitors can be a money-maker for your company.

The study documentation states that 108 university and non-university personnel participated in a comparison of single monitor, multi-monitor, and multi-monitor with Hydravision display configurations.

Respondents edited slide shows, spreadsheets, and text documents in a simulation of office work, using each of the display arrays. Performance measures—including task time, editing time, number of edits completed, and number of errors made, as well as usability measures evaluating effectiveness, comfort, learning ease, time to productivity, quickness of recovery from mistakes, ease of task tracking, ability to maintain task focus, and ease of movement among sources—were combined into an overall evaluation of productivity.

Multi-screens scored significantly higher on every measure. Respondents got on task quicker, did the work faster, and got more of the work done with fewer errors in multi-screen configurations than with a single screen.

Consider trying this in your office. Add a monitor or two to your desk and to those of your employees. See what kind of feedback you get and how much more efficient and productive they become when they have the ability to move quicker, use multiple applications at once, and no longer have to constantly minimize windows.

Frank Bravata is president of New Millennium Technology Services, a Long Island Computer Support firm. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.