Are your employees still using single monitors?

by | Dec/23/2009

Microsoft’s research shows that worker productivity increases from 9% to 50%: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/vibe.aspx

Dual monitors can pay for themselves quickly with increased worker productivity.  If a worker’s productivity is increased even only 9%, and you calculate 9% of their yearly pay, you can see what a bargain the dual monitors are as long as the employee is busy.

Another way of looking at this is that if you have a $50K/year employee who is overloaded and frequently flips between windows on their screen during the day to get work done, your choices to improve their work production at least 9% include:

  • Hire a new part time employee for $4.5K/year, plus HR costs, plus find a place for them to sit and work, buy them a computer and monitor, and spend time and money training them.
  • Or, get the first employee a second monitor for $300.

The prices are much lower than ever before. You can find high resolution 25.5-Inch widescreen LCD monitors for less than $300 each.  Most modern workstations support dual monitors—even many laptops.

Would you consider working on a desk that was 19″ or smaller diagonally? These days, the computer screen is your “desk.” Most desks are huge compared to the size of a single computer monitor.

Users who try two monitors and see how productive they can be never go back.