A couple of years ago, a GotVMail employee asked me if he could have a second monitor to increase his productivity, specifically stepping through and debugging code (that's the entrepreneurial spirit!). Within a week of giving him the second screen, I had requests from another quarter of the company asking for a second monitor for one reason or another. I didn't think anything of this request, and as the months flew by, the percentage of employees with two screens shot up to 90%. A year after setting up the second monitor for the employee who asked for one, I got the "ultimate request": "Can we make dual monitor setup part of our standard employee desktop build process?"
My answer? Well, I didn't have one right away. But it was time to think about the impact having two monitors made on productivity compared with the cost. That's when I realized I probably should've done this before supplying 90% of our employees with a second monitor (funny how that works).
The benefit of having two monitors is pretty straightforward: more screen space to do more things. While I can't monitor (no pun intended) the other "things" people do with their second screen (i.e., frequent checks of Facebook or MySpace profiles, along with healthy doses of reading on CNN, for example), I think can tell if having two monitors produces the same amount of productivity as just one monitor, or if it exceeds it, by just paying attention.
In the process of making my decision whether or not to institute the new "two screen policy" for all employees, I took an inventory of my own workspace: two 21" Dell monitors sit on an Ergotron mount which allows them to float above my desk. My Outlook is always open on the right screen and the entire left screen is for work. For me, this set-up just works. I can compartmentalize my on screen activities, and feel like my attention is focused solely on one project even when I might have about ten other things going on at the same time. If it works for me, I want to make that option available to my team, too.
If something like this has the potential to allow people to compartmentalize their work (and let's face it, a little of their play) then why not institute the policy? I know from personal experience that I was wasting a ton of time switching around from Firefox to Outlook, Word to Excel. Over the course of a day, this really adds up, and also crowds one screen. For those in engineering and operations, the multiplication of windows seems to be endless, and requires a solution such as viewing on two screens. So my answer to the "ultimate request" ? Yes.
I was the first person at a company I used to work for to use two monitors. At first, people sorta laughed at me. Then, slowly, one by one, I started seeing an additional monitor pop up on desks around the office. After a while, my boss had THREE monitors on his desk. This was in the days before LCD's started coming into vogue, too.
The trend seems to spread quickly in the office, happened here. I have 2 monitors on my desk, looked at adding a 3rd but video card would not support and I thought the heat coming from all the monitors might kill me :)
Working remotely or traveling is pretty hard now with a single and small laptop screen.
We just started using two monitors at our mobile marketing company and it has paid great dividends. At first I just laughed, but now I'm a believer. I estimate the increase in productivity to be 15%.
Bob,
Great to hear the 2nd monitor was useful, I love it.