AMERICAN 'IDLE'
By BILL HOFFMANN
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July 12, 2005 -- Time's a wastin' at offices across America — with workers frittering away more than two hours a day on the job, a new survey reveals.
And the biggest reason for the lost hours, which cost employers hundreds of billions, is Internet surfing.
The average worker admits wasting up to 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday — not including lunch and scheduled breaks, according to a poll conducted by America Online and Salary.com.
Companies have always assumed a certain amount of wasted time when determining employee salaries, but the survey indicates workers are wasting about twice as much time as their bosses anticipated.
The survey calculated that employers spend $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected, but not actually performed.
The biggest distraction for respondents was personal Internet use, with 44.7 percent of the more than 10,000 people polled citing Web surfing as their top time gobbler. Socializing with co-workers came in second at 23.4 percent.
Conducting personal business, "spacing out," running errands and making personal phone calls were the other popular time-wasting activities.
And just why are workers spending so much time doing so little work?
Some 33 percent said they engaged in time-wasting activities because they didn't have enough work to do.
And nearly a quarter of those surveyed said they squandered their work hours out of spite because they were being underpaid.
The survey found time-wasting has no gender boundaries — men and women squandered an equal amount of time at work.
But older workers were significantly more attentive than younger workers, with employees over 55 wasting an average of just 30 minutes a day, according to the survey.
Salary.com vice president Bill Coleman said some time-wasters can actually produce positive results by developing new business ideas or creating a happier workplace.
"There is such a thing as creative waste," he said. "Not all wasted time is bad."
Regionally, the most time appears to be wasted in the Midwest, while the least appears to be wasted in the South.
New York state ranks 18th, with an average of 2.4 hours being wasted at a cost to employers of $56.3 billion.
Jobs with the most time wasters are: insurance, the public sector, research and development, education and software & Internet companies.
The most time-conserving industries are: shipping and receiving, manufacturing, health care, finance and banking and marketing and communications.
