Record Number of Employees Waste Time at Work
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Salary.com, December 2008
According to Salary.com fourth annual Wasting Time at Work Survey, even in a tough economy where employees seem to be doing what they can to keep their jobs and not have to sign up for unemployment benefits, a significant portion of them are nevertheless wasting company time in one way or another.
The well-known provider of career advancement tool and resources surveyed more than 2,500 employees across all job levels in July and August 2008 to gather data for their latest survey. It found that the top five time-wasting activities are:
Perhaps more interesting than the time-wasting activity breakdown, though, was the breakdown by job level of those who admitted to wasting time during the workday. Salary.com's data on this is as follows:
The website deduced that the higher percentage toward the higher end of the management spectrum was due to the fact that workers higher up the ladder toward the CEO are supervised less closely.
Although many small business leaders we speak with mention their concerns with older workers and technology issues, interestingly Salary.com's data find that employees aged 50 and older waste the least amount of time at work – clear evidence that it is to leadership's benefit to focus training and development toward this demographic.
Using effective training and development, recognition practices and other initiatives to keep workers across all generations satisfied was reinforced as a best practice from the survey, however: job dissatisfaction was reported as the number one reason that employees waste time (46 percent). Other reasons for wasting time included:
And although the study reinforced a long-held perception that a lack of employee engagement can result in wasted time and other factors stemming from job dissatisfaction, notably it also found that work-related activities designed to boost camaraderie and productivity can have the opposite desired effect. A full three-fourths of respondents said that some office related activities cut into productive time at work.
