--By Sue Shellenbarger

 

Interruptions at the office are more than an annoyance. Research shows they fuel a sense of overload and add to stress, physical ailments and anxiety, as reported in today’s “Work & Family” column.

 

Most people try on their own to solve the problem, fleeing to a conference room or working from home when they need to concentrate. But tackling the problem as a team works better, according to employers and consultants.The best solutions require agreeing with co-workers that interruptions are a problem and figuring out better ways to communicate.

 

Some work teams adopt a shared signal that an employee is in deep-think and shouldn’t be interrupted except for a crisis. About 30 employees at a Colorado-based beverage company strung fishing line across their cubicle doors, then hung bright-colored swimsuit cover-ups over the line to use as curtains when they wanted to concentrate, says Laura Stack, a productivity trainer, author and speaker. When the curtains were drawn, co-workers stayed away except for top-priority issues. Employees at a construction company donned orange armbands as a no-interruption signal, she says.

 

To make team solutions work, Stack trains employees to prioritize their needs, similar to the way a triage nurse sorts patients into groups based on the urgency of their condition. “Priority One” issues are crises or emergencies that must be handled immediately; “Priority Two” issues might soon become a crisis, and so on. “Priority Four” is reserved for “occupational hobbies — anything we are doing to avoid doing a Priority One or Priority Two task,” Stack says; Priority Fours could be taken off your to-do list forever without harm.  If co-workers agree up-front on what kinds of issues demand immediate attention, most can cut interruptions significantly, she says.

 

Other work teams have to learn to say no, says Maura Thomas, a speaker and trainer on productivity and attention.  “People ask, ‘How do I get the message across that I don’t want to be interrupted? I try to keep typing when people are talking to me, but they just keep talking. Or I try to ignore them when they yell over the cubicle, but they just keep yelling. So I just give in to them.’ [These people] are using every technique except their words,” Thomas says. She coaches employees on polite deferrals, saying, “I’m sorry, I really can’t talk now. Could we meet later?” When all members of a work group hear the same message, they’re more likely to take such rejections in stride, she says.

 

Thomas also has co-workers set regular limits on their availability. Rather than setting an “open-door policy” that implies 24/7 access, she suggests managers limit open-door time to a few hours a day. Other teams set daily quiet hours for everyone. (http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork)