Quit Slacking!

According to a Web survey of 10,000 U.S. workers by AOL and Salary.com, on average, a little more than 2 hours per day per employee are squandered on activities completely unrelated to work. Wow! This is twice the amount expected by HR executives and this does not include time taken for lunch!

Note: These numbers don’t account for time wasted on non-value-add activities, such as unproductive meetings, either.

Topping the list of slacker diversions is surfing the Internet. Almost one hour per day per worker is spent browsing the Web.

Peter Drucker said, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Ergo, it doesn't matter how good or efficient you are at surfing the Net on the job. It's useless.

Top Time-Wasting Activities:

• Arriving late/Leaving early – 1%
• Planning personal events – 1%
• Making personal phone calls – 2.3%
• Running errands off-premises – 3.1%
• Spacing out – 3.9%
• Conducting personal business – 6.8%
• Socializing with co-workers – 23.4%
• Surfing the Internet – 44.7%

This is truly amazing. Consider the number of workers laid-off since George Bush took office. I don’t have the statistics in hand, but I am confident that is has been more than a dozen, and even minus those twelve individuals, U.S. workers have time to surf the Web almost an hour each day. What does this tell us? It tells me that U.S. workers are bored. They are not challenged. They are not engaged. They may be disenfranchised! How could this be? This is not an indictment of the men and women in the trenches. This is an indictment of their leadership. Yes, I believe personal accountability is important, but I also believe it should start at the top.

I wonder what role the war in Iraq and the seemingly endless list of corporate scandals plays in this.

Source: Baseline Magazine