A year ago my friend Russ Warner, CEO of ContentWatch, collaborated with me on the article Employees Really Do Waste Time At Work. The interest in that article continues to grow to this day. Today he shared his updated perspective. The verdict: We’re even worse off than before.
The distractions are endless. According to Socialnomics and other web sources, volumes of new data and photos are uploaded continually and Web surfers are bombarded with thousands–even millions–of fresh pics, tweets, and articles every day. More than 1.1 billion active Facebook users upload 350M photos daily. And more than 100 hours of video join the YouTube database every minute.
From Bad to Worse
For good or bad, we now have access to more than two Zettabytes of data worldwide as of 2011 (2 zettabytes = 2 trillion gigabytes). The data deluge has fostered an atmosphere of productivity loss and increased “me time” entitlement. However you look at it, the Internet provides the medium to needlessly occupy all of our time. Each of us has the option to waste or utilize time, but the outcome varies by the habits each of us set.
In business, we do not simply create or gain capital; we achieve it. Time, generously doused with effort, produces capital. When workers become lackadaisical, capital becomes weak. When employees shuffle back to their desks after an extended water-cooler conversation and toggle between a spreadsheet and their Facebook page (60 percent of users check Facebook daily), “like” a new pic on Instagram and then check their status with the 218 million professionals and friends on LinkedIn, they are wasting your time.
The simple truth: People waste time at work
Whether it’s web surfing, engaging in personal phone calls, searching for new job opportunities, gossiping by the water cooler, shopping online, exploring social networks or checking personal email, a great deal of working time slips away. Of all workplace distractions, the Internet is the greatest productivity drain.
Sixty four percent of employees visit non-work related websites each day. In this category, the amount of time wasted per week on non-work related websites is as follows:
Time Wasted Pct of Employees
<1 hour 39%
1-2 hours 29%
2-5 hours 21%
6-10 hours 8%
10+ hours 3%
Contributing to these percentages are social media networks. The winners for the time-loss warp are Tumblr (57%), Facebook (52%), Twitter (17%), Instagram (11%) and SnapChat (4%).
How much is too much?
Imagine an employee who works 2,080 hours per year (260 days). If she is in top the bracket of time wasters, she wastes 520 hours per year. That’s 25% of her total hours at work spent on unproductive activities. Clearly this costs your company capital.
In addition to the conscious wasting of time, companies also squander salary and benefits on distractions such as watching and following national sports. Workplace contests such as March Madness can be detrimental to time management and focus. Some 86% of employees will spend at least some time at work following March Madness this year.
While employees congregate around TV screens, they’re not answering phones or supporting clients on emails. March Madness alone, for example, costs U.S. companies $175 million in wasted time in just the first two days.
Why do employees waste so much time?
When you hire employees, you expect them to be efficient and do the job right. The employees who seek you out most generally ramped up their resumes, interviewed, and wanted their job. So why, once they get the job, do they slip into habits of time wasting and self-entitlement?
According to recent data from Salary.com, employees give the following responses:
· 34% of employees say they are not challenged
· 34% say they work long hours
· 32% say there’s no incentive to work harder
· 30% are unsatisfied with work
· 23% are just plain bored
· 18% say it’s due to low wages
As dismal as these reasons may be, all of them contribute to a lack of productivity. With no drive to work hard, employees simply plod through their work unfocused and unmotivated and get little done each day. Menial tasks become accepted as a way to fill time.
Wasted by Porn
Another distraction that is a huge issue from the standpoint of workplace liability is pornography viewing at work. Nielsen has found that 25 percent of working adults admit to looking at pornography on a computer at work. And 70 percent of all online pornography access occurs between 9 AM and 5 PM.
It’s clear that porn is a common occurrence at work. This not only wastes time but also creates a hazard in your work place environment as it can lead to complaints and trouble among co-workers, sexual harassment cases, and liability for employers who haven’t taken sufficient steps to keep the unwanted content from view (let alone the network bandwidth and malware issues involved).
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