Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Would it save my employer anything for me to be staring at the blank screen instead?
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
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...
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.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
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.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - G.B. Shaw
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?
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?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
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" 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.
--Chag
I'm amazed that there's no mention of smoking in the article at all. I wonder if it was even considered. Our workplace, like many others recently, has gone smoke free which means all the smokers are likely to disappear for 1/2 hour or more 3-4 times a day to get off the grounds to have a smoke. Some even get around the "no smoking on any company property" rule by standing in the street. It may not be the number one time waster, but it'd got to be up there.