So... who's doing the Work?

Recent New Zealand research has turned conventional thinking about computer use on its head, revealing that most of us spend as little as 2.4 hours a day actively engaged with our machines and nearly half of that is spent on emails or surfing the net.

The research was conducted by Christchurch-based software developer, Wellnomics, which analysed the behaviour of nearly 50,000 computer users across 95 organisations in Europe, North America and Australasia. The findings were presented by Wellnomics managing director Dr Kevin Taylor at PREMUS 2007, a leading conference on RSI held in Boston.

According to Dr Taylor, the data challenges previous assumptions on how long we spend on our computers at work. Traditional wisdom was based on self-reporting by computer users, but Dr Taylor says this has been consistently overestimated by between 40 - 100 per cent.

"Our data indicates that on average workers use their computers just 12.4 hours per week or 2.4 hours per day over a five-day working week," Dr Taylor said.

Only 12 per cent of users had average computing use exceeding 20 hours per week, with less than 1 per cent exceeding 30 hours per week.

"It seems that we all spend less time working at our computers than we imagine," he says, "and in fact, those few people who recorded more than 30 hours a week on the computer were working well beyond standard business hours to achieve those levels."

The Wellnomics data is based on odometer software installed on computers to record keystrokes, mouse clicks and time at the computer, and is part the Wellnomics WorkPace breaks and exercises software, which is used by more than 1.2 million computer users worldwide. The data was collected in the first four weeks that workers used the software.

Associated Link: Wellnomics Survey

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