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Bruce Ayres / Getty Images
Web surfing? Facebook? Online shopping? No. The water cooler, or its equivalent, kills the most time.
Technology may be revolutionizing the workplace, but old-fashioned distractions like meetings and chatting with co-workers are still considered the biggest office time-wasters.
That, at least, is the conclusion of a survey of office workers, released Thursday by TrackVia, a Denver-based software company.
Office chit-chat ranked as the No. 1 work distraction, the top choice of 14 percent of those surveyed, while meetings and computer problems followed close behind at 11 percent each.
Other time wasters mentioned by survey respondents:
- Surfing the web
- Dealing with office politics
- Addressing misunderstandings with co-workers
- Using social media
- Checking email
- Following company rules and procedures
It’s no surprise employees see going to meetings as a major obstacle to accomplishing their work-day goals, says productivity expert Laura Stack.
“A lot of people feel like they spend their entire day in meetings,” says Stack, a Denver-based speaker and author who leads 80 to 100 productivity training sessions a year.
In her experience with clients, however, employees waste far more time checking email, instant messages and social media like Facebook -- what she calls “tech time” -- than dealing with computer problems or on other non-critical tasks. “You could sit in your inbox all day and at the end of the day say, ‘Where’d all my time go?’” Stack says.
Holly Witt, a Portland, Ore., insurance account executive, says social media is her biggest time waster, especially Facebook.
“I keep telling myself to deactivate the account and I am almost there,” she says.
Slightly more than half of employees surveyed (51 percent) say they waste up to two hours a week on tasks that aren’t work related or don’t help them “get real work done.” Approximately 11 percent say they waste 6 to 9 hours on nonessential tasks, and close to 4 percent said they waste 10 to 19 hours during the work week, according to the survey.
The survey of 300 workers, conducted this month by Amplitude Research, has a margin of error of about 6 percent.
Michelle V. Rafter is a Portland, Ore., reporter who wastes time at work on Twitter and Pinterest.
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Leave a Comment:
As a sanitation engineer my biggest waste of time at work are exploding garbage bags.
My issues are somewhat similar... I work next to two bags of trash who spend hours every day yapping to their girlfriends on the phone.
My biggest waste of time was responding to e-mails from various bosses about project status. I spent more time updating them on the status and keeping project status updated in various tracking tools, earned value management tools, etc. then I did actually working on the projects themselves.
I highly encourage (covertly) that every worker spends more time in the bathroom, more time on the internet, more time talking to co-workers, more time getting in your co-workers business, more time counting how many minutes your co-worker takes atlunch, more time eating lunch and all of the collective lost production time will force companies to hire more workers. That's my solution to the unemployment problem. I used to go into a company and do a bang-up job for them. Not any more! I will screw them like they have screwed. Except I will do a better job! I am starting my own business and will not need that world in about 2-3 years. I will work for the best boss in the world, myself!
I'm with Positive Me, if we were productive every minute of every day of the week, we'd run out of work by Tuesday and they'd fire us. Seems like that's against my best interests...
Whers's the article titled "The Case for Treating People like Human Beings, and Not Serfs and Slaves". Give them a reason to care about their jobs besides just getting a paycheck and watch productivity increase. Plus, the more $hit you dump on people, the more they need escape valves.
And, it's been my experience that the biggest time wasting activities are those that companies foists upon their workers.
And anybody who doesn't think that this study isn't going to be used by management to beat people over the head with is daft.
So, I say pre-emptively...bosses of the world, F#$K OFF!!! And try doing some REAL work yourselves!
Caligula,
No, Serfs and slaves are still animals that demand air, water, food, toilets (for the products of water and food), rest and shelter. Better idea would be AI-driven robots. As long as the robots as stupid enough not to rebel.
I always loved the mandatory corporate ethos and sexual harrassment training sessions given on an annual basis. All because some grown-ups aren't and some 'big' people can't keep their drawers in place amongst the 'little' people.
wow the media and poll results only show how good your average wealthy, high middle class white family has it. 97% voted somthing wasting time? besides shouldnt that be a womens job? geez forget the ppl who build your stuff, and do the dirty work or the farmers. i have no time to waste or i wont get home and wont get to eat and sleep. i lift thousands of pounds daily, work very hard and make a litlle over minimum wage. then it takes over a hour to get home taking 2 buses. waste time? somtimes i cant even get my 30 minute break let alone goof off lol.
but then again i couldnt do a office job, i broke my back few years ago and sitting down on leather chair for 5 mins hurts and i hate sitting down on anything. so i give you office workers some credit. i couldnt be a office worker. not my style. i rather do what i do.
It is the ongoing back and forth with the boss on what she "really" means. Changing her mind and having to start over. Waste of money, time and high cost of frustration..
Mostly it's women sitting on facebook catching up with each other :)
Gee Andrew, I'm so glad men never do that.
Go to Youtube and search for 'office rage'....see who is talking and who gets upset by it. Some of the best videos I have seen there.
As a (former) state employee, social media, computer games, and other such uses of computers were strictly prohibited by state employees. Meetings, on the other hand, were endless and very unproductive.
Yep. We in the IT Profession have this thing called Websense (or whatever proxy client your company uses) It improves office efficiency and drives down worker morale by blocking annoying sites like Facebook, YouTube, MSN and Newsvine. (of course I have control over my company's so I can do whatever I want :D ... be nice to your IT People)
The endless ream of meetings is easily avoided by setting a server up to crash right before the meeting starts. "I am busy fixing a mission critical server" is an excellent excuse for missing a meeting. And I would rather rearrange the letters on my keyboard with my teeth than sit through another meeting about marketing goals that aren't in any way related to my department.
Article read and commented on, from my desk at the office. Is it Friday yet?
Yes, I wonder what percent of people are reading this while at work.
I'm at work reading this article what does that say? lol
That you will soon be unemployed.
That your IT department has an insufficient proxy filter?
As my place of work is my place. I never waste time even posting comments like this. My policy as far as employees goes is this. If the work is caught up and all shipments are ready to go have fun. Except for a monthly safety meeting I have an open door policy so if someone comes up with a better way to do things they know they can come to me directly. If it is a cost saving measure they are rewarded for it. So if you drive by my place and we are out playing volleyball or lawn darts it is not wasting company time rather it is keeping up the morale. I would rather have my people playing on the property than sitting on their thumbs waiting for something to do. Must work sales are up 360 per cent over last year when I instated this policy.
Sounds like you have created a great work environment - when can I start ;-)
26 years in the United States Army the one thing I learned if nothing else is that your people are the most important people in the world. Without them you can accomplish nothing.
BRAVO ZULU!!
I'm at work right now.....Working at a Doctor's offcie you have down time in between checking in patients
maybe you should work on lowering costs so you don't charge me $15 for an aleve and $250 for a 5 minute office visit.
Hey Paul;
Leave the poor girl alone,she's NOT the one charging you and she's not the one getting that money med admins and doctors tend to be a cheap bunch! basically they think everyone around them are maintenance workers and many pay these girls the lowest rates they can and pile as much work as they can on them..
Can't stand articles like this. Productivity has NEVER been higher than it is now. There will come a point where dry sponges can't be squeezed for any more water; articles like this are going to help that point come sooner. Honestly, the discussion should be about how to get workers more of a break rather than how to squeeze more out of them. Shame on the author.
Chatting w/co-workers is usually a morale booster. Happy employees are productive employees. As long as the work gets done, the company is making a profit - employees need to have some flexibility in their work day.
Most of my internet browsing and chatting is not time wasting but trying to reset my brain when it shuts of after hours of repetitive tasks. I'm not going to say I know for sure but it seems like I am more productive when I'm relaxed at work than trying to have laser focus on something that just drives me up a wall.
Chatting with coworkers is how I find out a lot, make connections, discover the network, and figure out how things 'work.' As a result I've gotten a reputation as the go-to person if you want to get something done or find something out. Btw, the article's author's byline says she is a reporter who "wates time at work." Maybe some time spent proofreading would be well spent.
Practical jokes.
Isn't everybody tired of consevatives bitching all the time?
oh and LIBERALS don't Bitch? they are the real LOONS -get to work BOY
@inArizona1 -- yes liberals do bitch, everyone bitches. Bitching and complaining about problems is the start to finding a solution. What bothers me is when the conservatives start calling people names. I always think it is because they get very frustrated making their argument and fall back on childish habits. For example: your spokesman, Rush Limbaugh, rarely proposes a solution to a problem or even describes a solution proposed by a conservative leader. Instead, he makes up silly names for Democratic leaders. To me, that is equivalent to "na, na, nana, na" on the playground. Even calling a vast group of people "LOONS" serves no purpose but to expose yourself as petty and mean-spirited. Stop spending time deriding other people and start thinking of solutions. Rather than waste time worrying about Obama's birthplace (if they found it in Africa, would it change you get the last three years back?) spend your time worrying about something YOU can do to make a difference.
News98: you see the wonder of the internet is you can easily search about his birth certificate and see you are still perpetuating a closed argument. But you won't and you'll go on calling Obama a Muslim fascist without ever looking for facts over your obviously superior opinion. /sarcasm
"Why am I able to get a birth certif. signed, sealed and certified in 2 weeks for $20 and our nation's "leader" hasnt been able to get one in THREE years???"
Not sure what planet your on but he released his birth certificate years ago... of course you'll say any official document that everyone (even the military) recognizes as legitimate is false because it fits your worldview.
Also please don't try to repeat the old Certificate of Live Birth is not a birth certificate BS because a COLB is the only thing I have otherwise I (white guy) am Japanese since I was conceived on Okinawa island yet born at Portsmouth VA Naval Hospital.
Republicans keep inventing lame concocted fantasies about conspiracies...never present any actual solutions and now refuse to even debate because they've become completely unreasonable. The party of no...
You want to go there? Whats Romney hiding?
You get what you pay for.
With technology, it's easy for work places to chart how much time employees waste online, and block offending websites that they frequent. So I am going with old fashioned chatting. Where I work, that's the #1 time waster. Meetings are a huge time waster, as well, but for management. They have meetings all the damn time.
My biggest time waster is firing the people that waste time.
That's what ( WEB SENSE ) is for.
One thing the article didn't mention, but is a big one for me: existing in a cubicle farm. I tend to be very distractible, so if there's a conversation 20 feet away it destroys my concentration even if I'm not really "listening." Plugging in my headphones works, but then it drives people nuts when they come to ask me something and I don't see/hear them.
I guess maybe this falls under the general category of "workplace stressors." All evidence points to the fact that office environments with cubicles not only destroy productivity, but also morale. (Ditto goes with lack of vacation/sick days) Morale affects employee health and how engaged they are with their tasks, which in turn affects the quality of the work done. These morale-killing environments are counterproductive and it makes no sense to do this.
The biggest time waster of all is poor leadership. You can waste more than idle chit chat time when you have a designated "leader" who does not know what he/she is doing. Square up your managerial decision makers corporate America, and watch your productivity and MORALE improve.
Just my 2 cents.
That was intresting, I better get back to work!!
Yes, let's OUTLAW talking with our coworkers. OMG, will the fanatical productivity checkers ever give up trying to extract every last drop of humanity from the human workforce so that we end up like automatons - programmed for rote unthinking assignments? I think I know who should shutup and it's not America's workers, it's the press and these asinine stories.