Let’s be honest, work is definitely more than an eight-hour-a-day experience. Just think of how many hours you spend on work, and not just at the office. Checking and drafting emails and working on presentations or proposals during your personal time certainly should count as business. Although this is a fact of life for some, it’s almost utterly impossible to spend all of your time devoted to one task for several hours. You may continue with the task on hand, but your mind often drifts to other things.
Is this the same as wasting time? Forbes staff writer, Susan Adams, discusses survey statistics from Salary.com on employees wasted time. According to the stats, many workers (34%) generally waste about a half an hour a day at work. A great portion of that time (43%) will be spent speaking with their co-workers. In Adams perspective, although the time is perceived as wasted, it could be a chance for workers to “deepen relationships, and spur ideas.”
Although this time with coworkers could be beneficial, there are other aspects of time wasting that are not as valuable to a company. Here are some of the surveyed examples, see if you can relate:
When you’re at work, what type of personal websites do you visit most?
News sites: 37%
None: 20%
Social media: 14%
Online shopping: 12%
Which site do you visit the most during the workday?
Facebook: 15%
Yahoo (Marissa Mayer would be happy): 14%
LinkedIn: 10%
Google+: 8%
Amazon: 6%
ESPN: 2%
What is the biggest distraction in your workplace?
Too many meetings: 19%
Inefficient teams: 17%
Coworkers: 17%
Office politics: 13%
Check out more at Forbes…