An interesting piece about how behavioral and cultural influences of the process of information impact productivity in organizations was posted today at MarketWatch.  Some companies have a culture of “the person that sends the most emails wins” that drives people to try to “keep up” with the prolific emailers, for example, and that causes productivity to fall throughout the company.  Instead, companies should set up reward systems and/or compensation plans that are based on actual outcomes and not on perceptions that actually are detrimental to the company performance.  Of course, this is easier said than done.

One thing companies could do: Tell employees their productivity isn’t measured in number of emails sent. Currently, “people need to maintain a certain communication noise level to keep up with everyone else,” said Tony Wright, founder of Seattle-based RescueTime, maker of a tool that measures how people manage their computer time. That’s a cultural problem “that businesses need to attack,” Wright said. “It’s honestly lazy management, in my opinion, to let that be part of your culture.”

Are we overwhelmed yet? Workers face huge influx of information, but they’re on their own in dealing with it. By Andrea Coombes, MarketWatch. 5/18/2009.