Thursday, August 17, 2006
Internet becomes business' wasteland
A lull is the cruelest slump, with workers sometimes goofing off two hours a day.
The latest from The Ticker blog
Phillip Cullum is one busy salesman.
He spends most of his day pushing Yellow Works, a Roanoke business that sells Hispanic phone directories.
But sometimes, as he sits at his desk, Cullum jumps on the Internet and surfs off to sites unrelated to his job.
"You're in front of a computer and it's there, you know?" he said on a recent afternoon, explaining his work-time jaunts.
Cullum isn't the only one frittering away company time on the Internet. In a recent survey, workers admitted to spending more than two hours during an eight-hour workday doing something other than work. That's not including scheduled breaks and lunch.
A survey by America Online and Salary.com found the top time-wasting activities were surfing the Internet and chatting with co-workers, followed by conducting personal business and "spacing out."
The survey of more than 10,000 self-selected AOL and Salary.com users calculated that wasted hours at work costs American companies over $750 billion a year in wages.
The top reason workers gave for wasting time is they did not have enough work to keep them busy. In second place, workers said they wasted time because they felt underpaid.
The survey found that women and men waste about the same amount of time at work, but that younger workers admit to wasting more time than older workers.
In Roanoke, the slack-off numbers did not come as a surprise, although no one admitted they spend up to two hours a day avoiding work.
"I'm not surprised at all," said Frank Hancock, a stock broker at AG Edwards & Sons. "They drink coffee, stand around the water cooler, do crossword puzzles."
But Hancock said he is too busy to waste time. "I have to be on the phone constantly, answering the question 'Where is my dividend?' "
Roanoke workers might not find the numbers surprising, but the results will likely come as a shock to human resources departments.
In the same survey, human resources professionals assumed that workers would admit to wasting less than an hour a day.
James Lang, a management professor at Virginia Tech, said the solution for wasted time lies with company leadership. "Managers can't be watchdogs," he said.
Instead, Lang said they need to motivate workers to want to do their jobs.
Casey Neeley, a teller supervisor at Valley Bank, found the numbers surprising. "I can't imagine getting away with that much time on the Internet," she said.
Neeley said she keeps tellers working by finding tasks for them, keeping talking to a minimum and reminding workers to stay on task.
But Neeley said she thinks little time is wasted in banking, because customers keep them busy.
Time waste varies by job type, the survey found. People in insurance wasted the most time. Workers in shipping and receiving wasted the least.
Karl Kuelz, an account manager for the printing company McClung Cos., said that in his job, like others where pay is linked to performance, there is no incentive to slack off.
Still, Kuelz said he is not immune to wasting time.
"I do the spacing out part," Kuelz said. "But I don't space out for two hours."
