Online perhaps, but are they in the loop?

Just because a worker is connected to the internet, it doesn't necessarily mean they will be more productive. In fact studies have shown the opposite may be true.

A man uses his mobile phone and laptop in Dubai.

So much for the technology boon. California's Silicon Valley now believes the internet-based communications technology it helped to develop represents a growing threat to business productivity.

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The University of California, based in San Francisco, has published a study that concludes the consistent multitasking involved in answering e-mails, monitoring social networking sites and other forms of electronic communications could impair business productivity. By eroding employees' short-term memories, electronic communications are directly impairing the ability of users to perform complex tasks requiring more than a few minutes' concentration.

Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist and author of Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality, a widely reviewed book about the internet's dangers, has monitored the psychological effects of Silicon Valley's internet-based culture from the start.

"I was a medical student at Stanford [University] in the heart of Silicon Valley at the start of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s," recalls Dr Aboujaoude. "It was really fascinating to watch fellow medical students being recruited out of the certainty of medicine into this exciting new field … I saw these same folks become unemployed with the dot-com bust that followed."

Intrigued as to the full extent of the negative impact of the internet on people's lives, Dr Aboujaoude helped conduct international research into the problem, monitoring 2,500 internet users. This led him to conclude that the productivity problems and employee-related health issues now causing concern are also endemic in any part of the world connected to the internet.

Dr Aboujaoude says a major problem caused by the internet that should sound alarm bells for companies is the way in which electronic multitasking destroys concentration for more complex tasks.

"The internet is a very fast-paced experience," he says. "We spend an average of 56 seconds on every page we visit, not to mention the pop-ups that are appearing from all four quarters of the screen. This makes it very hard to focus or remain focused for any length of time."

Industry analysts are now also starting to question the underlying assumption on which most IT business strategies are based. This is that a constantly connected workforce will inevitably result in increased productivity.

"There is not much strong evidence that the widespread adoption of electronic communications is really increasing productivity," says Dr Jeremy Green, a principal analyst at the international research company Ovum.

"Suppliers claim this [increased productivity], but they tend to measure inputs [such as the number of e-mails sent] rather than outputs," Dr Green says. "All this might mean is that people are spending more time responding to floods of messages which other 'productivity-increasing' devices have created."There is also growing evidence that companies may be storing up long-term problems in the form of unproductive, exhausted and unhealthy staff.

Cary Cooper is professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University and the co-author of The Long Work Hours Culture: Causes, Consequences and Choices. He was brought up in Los Angeles.

"New technology has invaded our life," says Professor Cooper. "E-mails appear to demand an immediate response, effectively making people work 24/7. Electronic overload means that the division between work and leisure has disappeared … Electronic overload has speeded up the pace of life to an unhealthy degree.

"All the existing evidence supports the view that working consistently long hours is not good for health, productivity or employees' private lives," he says. "And I am only talking about the ill-effects suffered by people working for over 40 hours a week. I am not referring to the 60-plus hours some people work, which is likely to have an even more detrimental effect in terms of productivity and health."

There are fears the limited research so far conducted may have revealed only the tip of an iceberg of work-related problems.

"One thing I hope is that, as a culture, we will start insisting more on science-driven data that we can point to about these changes," says Dr Aboujaoude.