A Study On Time Wasted At Work

Animesh Pathak writes "C|Net News has an article about a survey of people's goofing off habits at work. From the article: 'It's interesting to note that the Internet was cited as the leading time-wasting activity. It goes to show how integrated it has become to the daily functions of our personal and professional lives,...Today, there are so many useful tools and Web sites on the Internet that have enabled people to become more efficient with accomplishing multiple tasks in a shorter amount of time.'"

Standby Periods

[fembots]

The article did mention that not all waste is pure waste, as they could spark new ideas, and it's also likely to introduce ice-breaking topics so that everybody can sit together and chat about something in common.

Nowadays companies expect employees to be available from 7.30am to 6.30pm, but these employees aren't actually required all the time, the boss just wants you to be there so that when he needs you, he can find you.

The article mentions insurance industry is the worst, but what do they expect insurance call centre staff to do when nobody calls in?

Maybe start cold-calling: "Good morning Mr Anderson, this is Smith from Surely Insurance, we're wondering if you have a car accident today?"

So I normally treat non-productive time as time-out or standby periods for employees, they're getting paid to provide continuous service availability throughout the day.

Butt location.

[Jaywalk]

The internet also allows multitasking "wasted" and "productive" time because it's the only activity that keeps your butt firmly lodged in it's seat. I can check news or stock reports while waiting for that email to come back or for a compile to complete. If I actually got up and did something else, I wouldn't know when those things actually finished.

Would it save my employer anything for me to be staring at the blank screen instead?

Re:Standby Periods

[Nos.]

They even say that roughly 1/3 or respondants say they "waste" this time because they have don't have enough work.

Near the bottom of the salary.com article is this little blurb:
Populations surveyed included AOL users, Salary.com Salary Wizard users and corporate human resource professionals

So, a good portion of the surveyed group are visitors to salary.com. I would guess that a majority of people visiting salary.com are at least somewhat unhappy with their job. I don't think I would consider they're numbers worth anything. Its like asking people coming out of a theatre if they're willing to pay current admission prices to see a movie.

Without the internet and sites like /.

[phorm]

I'd possibly do more in a given day, but I'd also be much less informed. Quite a few purchase decisions, new technology concepts, and water-cooler-conferences are based around news/ideas I pick up on the net...

And to go a bit further, without forums, reference sites, online howto's, and last-but-not-least the almighty google I'd would be nearly as efficient as I am at work... having a server bork with mysterious driver issues is quite often solved with part inuition/experience and part googling the error messages...

Increased Leisure Time

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

I remember as a child being promised in TV programs about the future a shorter working week, increased leisure time, and robots and computers doing more of the work.

Instead I'm expected to be available 12 hours out of 24 instead of 8. So, when the machine is doing the job for me, or I need to take a break from a problem and come back fresh, why the hell shouldn't I goof off on the Internet. My parents' generation did it with newspapers - even if they had to lock themselves in the toilet to do so.

Its not the time invested that counts.

[Shivetya]

It is what you do with the time you dedicate to your job. My employer whats certain things done. I have timelines. As long as I meet or exceed those timelines they are more than happy.

Yes it has been commented that I surf a lot. However to have your VP rebut that comment with praise for the quality and consistency of your work does say that some people do get it.

Hell there are people not making calls or surfing that waste more of a companies time just by being there. I cannot tally the number of hours spent doing something someone else supposedly did. I cannot tally the hours spent on some high level persons personal directive that only was tossed at a later date.

"The Internet"

[erroneus]

I am still somewhat amazed that people fail to see "The Internet" for what it is -- a communications medium.

I use Television, Telephone, Radio, Cell phone, FAX, Newspapers and even the U.S. Postal service. None of these things are thought to be remarkable, ground-breaking or otherwise remarkable media. They aren't new but they are certainly very well integrated into the way we do business.

People are, instead, distracted by the newness and novelty of the applications that use the internet medium. We all know how people think "the web" == "the internet" and how wrong that is. So here again, we're talking about how the internet is changing the way we do business. It is and it isn't. We have a new medium with which we exchange information. In some ways it's superior to existing media and in other ways it's not. As the dust settles, people will use the medium that works best for their use. The Net obsoletes nothing specifically.

Re:the internet and solitaire.

[_RidG_]

That's absolutely ridiculous, provided that it was indeed the case that her work only took up 45 minutes of the day. Could you reasonably expect a sane person to sit at his / her desk five days a week, 8 hours every day, and do absolutely nothing for 7 hours and 15 minutes at a time?

I don't quite understand this logic. You are paying her to do her job, i.e. answer phones and do accounting. As long as that condition is satisfied, let her be. Your employees are people too, though by the hostile tone displayed throughout your post, it seems that there is certainly some bad blood there.

Re:the internet and solitaire.

[HeinJan]

She said she could do her job in 45 minutes and that the rest of the day there was nothing else to do.

Finally, cell phone service came to our area, (yes, we were very backwards here) and I fired her, took the computer home, cut 4 of my land lines and forwarded them all to my cell phone.

So basically the job could be done in 45 minutes... Why did you ever hire someone you didn't need?

Re:Survey idea

[einhverfr]

At what point will the economic damage caused by Slashdot exceed Google's market capitalization?

Re:the internet and solitaire.

[NeoSkandranon]

If the real reason you kept her around all day (as opposed to having her come in, do the work, and clock out) is so she could answer phones, why's it her fault that she didn't have other tasks to do after the 45 minutes of accounting work?

The way you make it sound is that she literally had no other tasks to perform (if this isn't hte case *please* correct me as it changes your story completely) --so what would you have had her do? start shampooing the carpet or something like that?

Re:This explains it all

[zookie]

OK, I know it's bad form to respond to my own post, but reading more about this "survey" really raises my ire about the willingness of the media to report junk surveys. This survey was all over the local news yesterday, mostly because my state (Missouri) was the chief time waster. Even the governor had to respond to the media saying that we Missourians aren't a bunch of lazy workers.

But then if you look at the "methodology" [salary.com] of this survey (see bottom), you'll see there wasn't a shred of science in this. Not only was the audience surveyed limited to AOL users, Survey.com users, and HR professionals, but the "data was analyzed by Salary.com's team of Certified Compensation Professionals." What the hell is a "Certified Compensation Professional" and what do they know about statistics and surveys?

The media needs to be a little more responsible in writing news stories based on something as weak as an online survey that had no scientific sampling or margin of error associated with it. If anything this proves that reporters are the lazy workers here.

Re:Standby Periods

[newend]

I'd question how good of a sample salary.com has. I imagine anyone who's already surfing to a website to take a survey is likely to spend more time surfing anyway. There is no mention of the confidence interval or any other important statistical information.

Wasted Time and The 40 Hour Week

[Chagatai]

Keep in mind that studies over the past hundred years have shown that the 40-hour workweek is optimal for productivity. When workers are now putting in an average of 50 hours per week, with even lower productivity because of those excess hours, I would argue that the "wasted" time during the week is actually increasing productivity, if anything. And like other posters have said, this "wasted" time is often intermingled with productive work. For instance, I am in a class after having finished a lab right now.

Re:Standby Periods

[Fortran IV]

It's 'their', not 'they're'. You ignorant bafoon!

The proper spelling is buffoon. Have a nice day.

I wonder if there's ever been a study done on how many "spelling nazis" have typos of their own in their spelling flames of other posters.

And I wonder if there's ever been a study on how many people on Slashdot never get the joke.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh, only EMPLOYEES waste time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see a survey about how much of employees' time is wasted by their MANAGERS.

Let's see how much work time is pointless 'face time' put in by workers to avoid being the first one out/last one in.

Let's see how much the CEO makes in the average company that's going under.

Really. Why is there this idea that we exist only to WORK? Is this is a USA thing? I was under the impression the Euros were much more sensible...

Re:my personal experience with 'wasting time'

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience is that when I'm wasting time, it's due to some combination of lack of motivation to find work, an unwillingness of management to give me work and responsibilities to fill my time, and a very totalitarian mentality about subservance and authority. Basically, they treat me like I'm in grade school.

So you demonstrate that their expectation that their employees need to be treated like high school students by wasting time because "no one will give you work" rather than showing some initiative and finding something good for the company to do? I can't imagine why management would think they need to be so Draconian.

~~~

Re:Is It Really Wasted Time?

[dschl]

Another example: lets say you have server trouble. The boss doesn't know, and you want to solve it before he notices...SNIP...

How should we handle managers like that?

Communication? I hear that talking to managers and keeping them updated works wonders.

Re:Wasted Time and The 40 Hour Week

[Naepustus]

"Due to the socialist nature of France and Europe in general, it's very difficult and expensive to fire someone. So the rule is "Don't hire anyone if you don't absolutely have to.""

Actually, it's not that difficult or expensive - it happens all the time. The laws are made against frivolous and wrongful terminations. Nothing wrong there.

"Yes. Ignorance IS bliss. You know what else they don't have? Dentists. Doctors that will keep your wife from dying in labor. Birth control. Peniclin (Boy that wound looks infected. Sucks to be you.) Alchohol. And that's just the medical stuff."

Actually a lot of bushmen don't even need dentists that much, because they don't have cavities nearly as much as westerners do. They don't eat sugar or candies, or drink soda even remotely like we do.
They know the natural curatives and make medicine from them. They are their own doctors and yet somehow they manage to survive in circumstances where a westerner would be dead in days. What does that say about us?

"Heh. Do you realize you're suggesting that people get paid no matter how productive they are?"

This may come as a surprise to you, but that's EXACTLY how it goes. Quite often the workforce is underworked under normal circumstances, so that when the proverbial hits the fan, the overhead can be put to use.

"I work 12 hours a day. Would that be maxi-minimizes?"

No, that would be either stupid or inefficient. You really need to say "stop" at some point. What is the point of working, if you never get to enjoy life outside work?

"It's called "The Weekend". That's it. You get two days to have your fun, I suggest you spend your weekdays doing chores.
If you want to spend more than 2 days having fun, man, you're making good money to be able to afford it."

I've said this in other forums before: What the hell is with the notion of "making it"? I barely work 8 hours a day, don't make a fortune, and chill the rest of the time. I have a roof over my head. I have a kick-ass home theater. I have a bicycle for excercise. What else would I need? I don't have to "make it". I have to enjoy life while I'm still young and relatively healthy to appreciate it.

If you need more than 8 hours a day to do your job, you're not doing it right. If a doctor does 24-hour shifts in the ER, that's not only stupid, that's reckless endangerement and should be penalized.

Of course, that's just me. I could be wrong.