Americans work some of the longest hours and get some of the fewest vacation days in the world, but a new infographic shows that a lack of worker productivity still exists in the United States. The annual payroll loss from employees spending time on tasks that are not work-related is $134 billion. 39% of employees spend less than one hour per week on non-work tasks while 3% spend over ten hours per week doing things that are not work-related during work hours.
What’s Causing All of This Wasted Time?
Wasted time doesn’t just come from non-work tasks. Many daily work-related tasks are wasting time, too. Check out the infographic below and see for yourself that meetings account for 47% of wasted time, office politics 43%, annoying coworkers 36%, busy work 22%, tending to emails 20%, the Internet 18%, and dealing with bosses 14%.
And of the people who are wasting their time on the Internet when they’re on the clock, the majority are on social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn. Perhaps most surprising in the data is the huge amount of money that Fantasy Football and NCAA men’s basketball tournaments cost businesses. According to the data in the infographic, businesses lose 8 million employee hours from employees watching NCAA men’s basketball tournament games while they’re at work, and $1.1 billion is lost per week from employees spending time tending to their Fantasy Football teams.
One more thing, employees don’t care if internet access is blocked by their employers. While one out of three companies blocks access to a variety of time-stealing Internet sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, nearly 2 out of 3 employees would access those sites during work time anyway through their smartphones, tablets, or laptops.
Via: BOLT Insurance
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
Follow Me:
Please note that the St George’s cross is not the flag of the United Kingdom. It is the flag of England which is one of the four countries that make up the UK.