Working hard, or hardly working?
Hoosiers excel at wasting time on the job
By Max Showalter
mshowalter@journalandcourier.com
Playing solitaire or poker on the Internet, chatting about American Idol or The Sopranos, balancing a checkbook and engaging in a little daydreaming.
Those are some of the things Hoosier workers do while they are on the job. And they do them to such an extent that Indiana is ranked second highest in a recent survey of the amount of time people waste at work.
According to the survey conducted by American Online and Salary.com, only Missouri, at 3.2 hours per day, beat Indiana's 2.8 hours a day in time wasted by employees. Kentucky and Wisconsin were tied with Indiana.
The national average is 2.09 hours frittered away in an eight-hour workday, not including lunch and scheduled breaks.
"A certain amount of slacking off is already built into the salary structure," said Bill Cameron, senior vice president of Salary.com. "Our survey results show that workers on average are wasting a little more than twice what their employers expect.
That's a startling figure."
That assessment of Hoosiers wasn't much of a surprise to Don Wood of West Lafayette.
"We Hoosiers are already among the smokingest and fattest Americans, so it's not surprising we're part of the 'laziest,' " said Wood, who retired in August after a career as a certified therapeutic recreation specialist at Wabash Valley Hospital.
"But wait a minute," Wood asked. "Who says 'time wasting' is really a waste of time? I could go on about this ... but I'm retired."
David Vorbeck, managing director of Bison Financial Group in Lafayette, is also not surprised by the survey results, which show the time wasted by Indiana workers accounts for more than $25 billion worth of salary annually.
He feels that personal anxiety is one of the main reasons people don't always stay on task when they are at work.
"We probably have one of the most anxious work forces. Health care and mortgage foreclosure rates being what they are, it doesn't surprise me," Vorbeck said. "Imagine if you were one paycheck away from being foreclosed or didn't have health insurance and your child is sick.
"We try as an employer to diminish anxiety. I am reasonably confident our employees give us a full 40-hour work week."
How we waste time
Among more than 10,000 people polled for the survey, the top time-wasting activities include:
Surfing the Internet for personal use: 44.7 percent.
Socializing with co-workers: 23.4 percent.
Conducting personal business: 6.8 percent.
Spacing out: 3.9 percent.
Other time-wasting activities included running errands off-premises, making personal telephone calls, applying for other jobs, planning personal events and arriving late or leaving early.
"It's interesting to note that the Internet was cited as the leading time-wasting activity. It goes to show how integrated it has become to the daily functions of our personal and professional lives," said a statement released with the survey from Samara Jaffe, director of careers at America Online.
The people who were surveyed gave plenty of reasons for wasting time at work. They included:
Don't have enough work to do: 33.2 percent.
Underpaid for the amount of work they do: 23.4 percent.
Co-workers distract me: 14.7 percent.
Not enough time on evenings and weekends: 12 percent.
Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said the city's information technology department has the capability of monitoring what sites municipal employees visit on the city's computers.
"We have a very strict Internet policy. Our I.T. department checks every day and prints out a monthly report. We're very, very restrictive about what sites they can access," said Roswarski. "We've changed some departments over to cubicle-type areas to make sure employees are focused on their work."
Improving evaluations
Ramon Greenwood, senior career counselor with commonsenseatwork.com, said people who cut the amount of time they waste at work from two hours per day to one hour could see a bigger paycheck down the road.
"That means if you work five days per week, you could easily add five hours a week to your productivity. In a 50-week work year, you would be gaining 250 hours, or over 31 eight-hour days of productive time," Greenwood said. "I have to believe the things you could accomplish in those 31 plus days would certainly show up on the positive side of your annual review and lift you above the average."
Vorbeck said Bison Financial Group encourages its employees to be active in local nonprofit organizations and provides them with opportunities to do volunteer work when they normally would be at work.
"If it takes them out of the office during the day, they can accumulate one hour of vacation time for every hours they donate, up to two weeks," he said. "We build that into our work year."
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So how much time do you think you waste during the work day? How? And why?
Hoosiers excel at wasting time on the job
By Max Showalter
mshowalter@journalandcourier.com
Playing solitaire or poker on the Internet, chatting about American Idol or The Sopranos, balancing a checkbook and engaging in a little daydreaming.
Those are some of the things Hoosier workers do while they are on the job. And they do them to such an extent that Indiana is ranked second highest in a recent survey of the amount of time people waste at work.
According to the survey conducted by American Online and Salary.com, only Missouri, at 3.2 hours per day, beat Indiana's 2.8 hours a day in time wasted by employees. Kentucky and Wisconsin were tied with Indiana.
The national average is 2.09 hours frittered away in an eight-hour workday, not including lunch and scheduled breaks.
"A certain amount of slacking off is already built into the salary structure," said Bill Cameron, senior vice president of Salary.com. "Our survey results show that workers on average are wasting a little more than twice what their employers expect.
That's a startling figure."
That assessment of Hoosiers wasn't much of a surprise to Don Wood of West Lafayette.
"We Hoosiers are already among the smokingest and fattest Americans, so it's not surprising we're part of the 'laziest,' " said Wood, who retired in August after a career as a certified therapeutic recreation specialist at Wabash Valley Hospital.
"But wait a minute," Wood asked. "Who says 'time wasting' is really a waste of time? I could go on about this ... but I'm retired."
David Vorbeck, managing director of Bison Financial Group in Lafayette, is also not surprised by the survey results, which show the time wasted by Indiana workers accounts for more than $25 billion worth of salary annually.
He feels that personal anxiety is one of the main reasons people don't always stay on task when they are at work.
"We probably have one of the most anxious work forces. Health care and mortgage foreclosure rates being what they are, it doesn't surprise me," Vorbeck said. "Imagine if you were one paycheck away from being foreclosed or didn't have health insurance and your child is sick.
"We try as an employer to diminish anxiety. I am reasonably confident our employees give us a full 40-hour work week."
How we waste time
Among more than 10,000 people polled for the survey, the top time-wasting activities include:
Surfing the Internet for personal use: 44.7 percent.
Socializing with co-workers: 23.4 percent.
Conducting personal business: 6.8 percent.
Spacing out: 3.9 percent.
Other time-wasting activities included running errands off-premises, making personal telephone calls, applying for other jobs, planning personal events and arriving late or leaving early.
"It's interesting to note that the Internet was cited as the leading time-wasting activity. It goes to show how integrated it has become to the daily functions of our personal and professional lives," said a statement released with the survey from Samara Jaffe, director of careers at America Online.
The people who were surveyed gave plenty of reasons for wasting time at work. They included:
Don't have enough work to do: 33.2 percent.
Underpaid for the amount of work they do: 23.4 percent.
Co-workers distract me: 14.7 percent.
Not enough time on evenings and weekends: 12 percent.
Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said the city's information technology department has the capability of monitoring what sites municipal employees visit on the city's computers.
"We have a very strict Internet policy. Our I.T. department checks every day and prints out a monthly report. We're very, very restrictive about what sites they can access," said Roswarski. "We've changed some departments over to cubicle-type areas to make sure employees are focused on their work."
Improving evaluations
Ramon Greenwood, senior career counselor with commonsenseatwork.com, said people who cut the amount of time they waste at work from two hours per day to one hour could see a bigger paycheck down the road.
"That means if you work five days per week, you could easily add five hours a week to your productivity. In a 50-week work year, you would be gaining 250 hours, or over 31 eight-hour days of productive time," Greenwood said. "I have to believe the things you could accomplish in those 31 plus days would certainly show up on the positive side of your annual review and lift you above the average."
Vorbeck said Bison Financial Group encourages its employees to be active in local nonprofit organizations and provides them with opportunities to do volunteer work when they normally would be at work.
"If it takes them out of the office during the day, they can accumulate one hour of vacation time for every hours they donate, up to two weeks," he said. "We build that into our work year."
-----------------------------------------------------------
So how much time do you think you waste during the work day? How? And why?
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