Signs your frontline workforce has information overload (and why it’s a problem)

Have you ever walked into a children’s birthday party when it was in full swing? It’s like being submerged into an ocean of noise: kids screaming and laughing and crying (sometimes all at once), running around all over the place, making it impossible for you to sort names or faces.

Now imagine all of those noises are internal communications: long-winded company announcements, lengthy product advisories, information that is only relevant to a segment of the workforce, the same communication delivered on multiple platforms… you get the idea. How can anyone know what’s relevant and important to them when everything is yelling for attention?

This is what information overload feels like. And your frontline workforce could be suffering from it. 

What is information overload?

Information overload happens when a person receives more information than they can effectively process. Making decisions or performing tasks while suffering from information overload becomes difficult and can impair judgment. It can even cause physical and mental harm if it goes on for too long (more on that later!). 

The term “information overload” first appeared in Bertram Gross’s 1964 book The Managing of Organizations. Since then, numerous other studies have validated his observations and psychiatrists worldwide have explored the concept further. In the pre-internet days, people were already suffering from information overload, so you can imagine how much worse it is now that information is so readily accessible online. The sheer volume of digital information thrust upon modern employees has exponentially grown. 

Frontline employees are particularly prone to this, as they only have a limited time to consume company and product updates (all marked ‘urgent’) before focusing on their actual tasks. 

What causes information overload?

In Information Overload: Causes, Symptoms, and Solution, Harvard researcher (and former Performance Enhancement and Culture Director for Chick-fil-a) Joseph Ruff attributed information overload to five primary factors:

• Technology
• People
• Organizations
• Processes and tasks
• Information attributes

All of these factors tend to overlap, making it difficult for businesses to manage the flow of information. 

Technology

Ruff is very clear on technology’s impact on employees: “Technology plays a significant role in the cause of information overload. It not only helps to create content information, it also gives us access to vast amounts of it. Learning how to use this technology introduces still more information with which to contend.”

Technology is ubiquitous in everything we do, especially in frontline organizations. Sure, it can drive operational efficiency, improve consistency and make communicating with staff at scale easier. But organizations need to be aware of the impact of these tools and ensure they’re using them effectively. 

People

Frontline employees often work in a team environment, which means close communication. Team members have to exchange information constantly under pressure while servicing customers. 

Site supervisors try to help coordinate workers mid-shift and pass along vital information from corporate, but this often results in a communication cascade, where the manager becomes an information bottleneck.

Organizations

Companies need to keep employees informed about significant changes, but they have a habit of blasting every little update to every employee, whether relevant or not. 

“When the change process is implemented well, the information load can be reduced,” Ruff says, “When handled poorly information load can escalate.”

In other words, frontline workers don’t have time to sift through a dozen company updates to find the ones that are most relevant to them, so they ignore everything.

Processes and tasks

According to Ruff, “The more complex a task is, the greater the information load and the more time required to complete it.” 

Training can help reduce this load, and experience can turn the most complex task into a simple routine, but any change in the process immediately throws a wrench into the works.

Does the customer have a special order? Did corporate introduce a new menu item? The cashier needs to effectively explain it to the back of house, who then has to break from their established routine to accommodate the changes. Specifications like this slow processes down, as staff try to familiarize themselves with something new while still maintaining the SLA for regular items.

Information attributes

Digesting new information is tough enough, but is the new information reliable? Does the site manager have a bad habit of misinterpreting the information they get from corporate? When a coworker explains how a new product works, do they get it right? 

The less confident employees are about the quality of the information, the more confused they become—and the worse they perform. 

What does information overload do to your frontline workforce?

Information overload is a serious issue that can have a significantly negative impact on your business and, more importantly, on the well-being of your employees. Here are a few of the information overload symptoms that frontline organizations might see:

Mental health issues

Being bombarded with information on a regular basis is not good for you. One study of managers in the U.K., U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore found that 42% attributed ill health to information overload, and two out of three respondents associated information overload with tension with colleagues and loss of job satisfaction. Another Gallup study found that information overload is one of the major factors driving 76% of workers to experience burnout at work. 

Mental health issues caused by ineffective workplace communications are not to be taken lightly, as the stressful effects will cascade to other areas of life and performance.

Poor productivity

Frontline workers always have a lot of things to do, but never enough time to do it. Do you think they have time to read lengthy corporate memos? That’s a big “no.”

Staying up to date takes a lot of time in a frontline environment—critical moments that could be better spent assisting customers, managing staff and maintaining smooth operations. 

Team cohesion and employee morale

Stress is never good for relationships, especially workplace relationships, which are often high-tension and under constant pressure. 

Above, we discussed how information overload led respondents in one study to have increased tension with colleagues. This tension can also lead to further negative impacts, including lower team morale, poor location performance and even heightened employee turnover.

Safety concerns

What could be more important than workplace safety? Manufacturing facilities, for example, are dangerous places with heavy equipment and hazardous materials, and the slightest lapse in judgment can be lethal. 

While the dangers in retail and foodservice roles may be less obvious, incidents can still turn ugly when people aren’t at their most attentive. 

Knowledge gaps

If a retail worker is so overwhelmed with information that he can’t digest anything, then what’s going to happen when a customer asks him a question? Nothing, that’s what. 

The worker has no answer, the customer gets no information… and you make no sales. This consequence of information overload can hobble your workforce readiness and tank the performance of any product launches you may be planning.

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Information overload is a serious issue that, if left unchecked, can harm your frontline staff, increase turnover and decrease customer satisfaction and profit. An effective communication strategy for your frontline workforce allows you to share the right information at the right times and drive the impact your business needs.