By Susan Adams, Forbes.com
Special to Online Career Tips
Salary.com, a 14-year-old career website owned by IBM that supplies job seekers with free general salary information and more detailed information for a fee, just released a survey where it asked workers how they waste time at work. The survey was conducted online and more than 1,000 people responded. I’ll get to the results in a moment, but first I have to raise a few questions.
What does it mean nowadays to say we’re wasting time at work? What does it even mean to be at work, given how often we check and respond to work demands on our electronic devices when we are out of the office?
How do we distinguish time-wasting from productivity? Don’t we get some of our most creative ideas while we’re heading to the canteen for a coffee break, or informally chatting with colleagues? After news broke last month that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was banning telecommuting at the troubled Internet company, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki pointed to a study by organizational behavior guru John Seely Brown who found that Xerox copy repairmen who hung out in the coffee room were not wasting time at all, but engaging in productive conversations about problems they faced on the job. Likewise MIT computer scientist Alexander “Sandy” Pentland has run studies that show how informal, serendipitous communication among call center workers increased productivity by 20%
With all that said, it’s still interesting to consider what most of us see as wasting time and exactly how we feel we are wasting it. Here are some of the results from the Salary.com survey:
How much time do you waste per day?
30 minutes: 34%
One hour: 24%
One hour, 1-2 times per week: 21%
A few hours a day: 11%
None: 10%
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%
Entertainment/lifestyle: 8%
Sports: 3%
Travel: 2%
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%
YouTube: 2%
Twitter: 2%
Craigslist: 2%
Pinterest: 1%
How do you waste time at work?
Talking with coworkers: 43%
Web surfing: 28%
Texting: 4%
Social media: 4%
Personal calls: 4%
Shopping online: 2%
Which day do you waste the most time at work?
Monday: 16%
Tuesday: 3%
Wednesday: 9%
Thursday: 6%
Friday: 43%
What time of day do you waste the most time?
7am-9am: 15%
9am-11am: 10%
11am-1pm: 13%
1pm-3pm: 16%
3pm-5pm: 27%
What is the biggest distraction in your workplace?
Too many meetings: 19%
Inefficient teams: 17%
Coworkers: 17%
Office politics: 13%
Busy work: 13%
Other: 11%
My boss: 8%
If your company blocks sites you want to use, will you use your smartphone to view them while at work?
Yes: 52%
No: 41%
These sorts of surveys are always interesting food for thought but I think this one should be read with a skeptical eye, particularly the idea that 43% of time wasted at work is spent talking with colleagues. That could in fact be the most productive part of your day. Not only do face-to-face conversations deepen relationships, they also spur ideas.
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