Toggle Tax Reigning Terror on Your Business?
While many of us are still feeling the post-Halloween candy coma, we thought we’d continue the spooky theme for today’s blog topic. Have you ever heard of the Toggle Tax? Not to scare you, but you and your colleagues are likely paying it every workday. This term was coined by a recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) study that examined several Fortune 500 companies and the time workers spent toggling between apps and websites in order to do their jobs.
Follow along as we unwrap the unsettling facts behind this industry research and how Glances can turn the terrors of the Toggle Tax, app overload fatigue, and other dreadful side effects of managing multiple apps into a more streamlined, less distracted workflow.
Switching apps happens way more than you think
Jumping from app to app to check off tasks and complete work has become such a natural occurrence that we often don’t grasp the actual numbers behind our app-switching habits. Back in 2020, we found research that showed workers switched apps over 1,100 times per day. That number was shocking enough, but it seems to have gotten exponentially worse over the last few years as companies’ tech stacks have grown to meet the demands of hybrid schedules and fully remote work.
Per HBR contributors Rohan Narayana Murty, Sandeep Dadlani, and Rajath B. Das, “Consider an example from a Fortune 500 consumer goods organization we studied. To execute a single supply-chain transaction, each person involved switched about 350 times between 22 different applications and unique websites. Over the course of an average day, that meant a single employee would toggle between apps and windows more than 3,600 times.”
The Toggle Tax takes more than a psychological toll
If working with dozens of open tabs and apps makes you feel scattered and unfocused, you are not alone. Constantly switching between apps means you are frequently changing contexts and readapting to handle the next item on your to-do list. This not only takes a hefty toll on your mental state, it also consumes time away from the talent-based work you were actually hired for.
“On average, the cost of a switch is little over two seconds and the average user in the dataset toggled between different apps and websites nearly 1,200 times each day,” the HBR article states. “That means that people in these jobs spent just under four hours a week reorienting themselves after toggling to a new application. Over the course of a year, that adds up to five working weeks, or 9% of their annual time at work.”
Multiple apps and distraction go hand in hand
The HBR research also found that after 65% of switches, users toggled to another app less than 11 seconds later. This flip-flopping between applications so quickly – and lack of focused time spent working there – does not begin to balance out the tax professionals are paying to make each switch. The article notes that how we work is essentially a distraction, which feeds into the overarching issue of “work about work”.
Fight the Toggle Tax with Glances
If using several business apps, toggling and switching contexts, and searching for data is a recurring frustration for you and your team, Glances is the workflow solution you need. Built as your go-to hub for customer insights and personal tasks, Glances securely connects all of your apps and provides a simplified view of the data you need in real time.
Whether you spend your time in monday.com, Salesforce, or QuickBooks, Glances empowers you to stay working in your platform of choice without toggling away and losing focus. You can also use Glances Actions to complete tasks for other apps while working anywhere online, such as creating applications, invoices, estimates, and much more. Watch how it works below.
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Source: Harvard Business Review article, “How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications?” by Rohan Narayana Murty, Sandeep Dadlani, and Rajath B. Das