Report: 25pct Of Workers Time Spent on Personal Stuff

[engine]

Report: 25pct Of Workers Time Spent [arstechnica.com] on Personal Stuff

If you're reading this while your boss thinks you're hammering away on some code or updating that Excel spreadsheet, then you're likely one of the workers that spend about 25 percent of their work time doing personal stuff online. And chances are that your boss doesn't even know it. Network security consultant firm Voco says that CEOs and CIOs of companies are often completely unaware of what employees are doing online during work hours, allowing them (especially the tech-savvy ones) to get away with all sorts of online goofing off. Employees tend to spend work time browsing eBay auctions, using online dating or social networking sites, chatting over IM, and more, and they do it for just over a quarter of the time they spend at work.

[thecoalman]

I don't know if that is necessarily a bad thing. Happy workers are more productive, it only becomes an issue if they are constantly being interrupted for a short time. I worked on a construction crew many years ago. Our foreman was a very easy going guy, extended breaks and long lunches. He wouldn't get on you if you were sitting around especially if you were doing something labor intensive. We were also the best crew and fastest crew in the company. Stuff got done and fairly quickly compared to others at a seemingly leisurely pace. ;P

[trillianjedi]

Stuff got done and fairly quickly compared to others at a seemingly leisurely pace

Exactly. This is the old "the output is more important than the input" equation.

[sonjay]

Does anyone have any stats on how much time people spent "goofing off" before the internet? As in, chatting at the water cooler or coffee machine, smoke breaks in the break room, flirting with the guy or gal in the next cubicle, etc.?

[piatkow]

Just walk round the building holding a piece of paper!

[rocknbil]

Doesn't Google have this in their employment guidelines, that you can spend up to 20% of company time on personal browsing, etc.? Definitely a positive motivating factor in the workplace.

My experience in corporate conditions has been that it's far worse than 25%. If you count all the discussions with co-workers about your kids, trips around the office for no particular reason, forwarding goofy joke emails, reading goofy joke emails, laughing about and sharing goofy emails, checking up on the latest eBay joke auction, and all the other stuff throughout a work day it adds up to a lot more than 25%. And it seems the more strict the policies, the more abusive the employees.

My favorite was the news clip from The Tonight Show with the headline, "County Employees Overworked" (paraph.) Below it was a picture of the office and employees. Right in the foreground you get a good shot of the woman's monitor . . . . engaged in a game of Windows Solitaire.

I have an anal self-imposed work ethic, which hasn't made me a lot of friends. My feeling is that if you're going to be there for 8 hours, you might as well DO THE JOB. This has always been one of my pet peeves and what I hated most about working in office environments.