Work's Biggest Sabateurs

By Rachel Zupek, CareerBuilder.com

 

Think about how often you check your personal e-mail, get up to "stretch your legs," catch up on the latest news or chat with colleagues. At the time, these activities barely seem to put a dent in your workday - but the minutes add up. In fact, they add up to more than two hours per day - and that's not even counting lunch!

Employees admit to logging an average of 2.09 hours each day trolling the Internet, fraternizing with co-workers, running personal errands and making personal phone calls, according to a Salary.com survey. Think about that: While it's nice to believe you're putting in a hard (and full) day's work, when you add up all the time you spend on non-work related activities (plus lunch and other scheduled break times), employees are working less than 5 hours per day on an average 8-hour workday.

So what are employees doing to waste time on the company dime? Check out the survey's top 10 time-wasting activities:

1. Surfing the Internet -- 44.7 percent
2. Socializing with co-workers -- 23.4 percent
3. Conducting personal business -- 6.8 percent
4. Spacing out -- 3.9 percent
5. Running errands off-premise -- 3.1 percent
6. Making personal phone calls -- 2.3 percent
7. Applying for other jobs -- 1.3 percent
8. Planning personal events -- 1.0 percent
9. Arriving late/leaving early -- 1.0 percent
10. Other -- 12.5 percent

Great expectations
Believe it or not, your company actually expects you to waste some time - just not quite as much as you are. Employers expect the average employee to waste about an hour per day, plus the worker's lunch hour, according to a survey of HR managers. "A certain amount of slacking off is already built into the salary structure," says Bill Coleman, senior vice president at 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."

Employers spend $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected but was not actually performed, according to the survey. Yikes. Money for nothing? Lucky for you, not all employers see wasting time as money down the drain but as "creative waste," Coleman says. In other words, the time you spend surfing the Internet or chatting by the water cooler might turn into new business ideas, ways to improve efficiency or simply improve the work environment. Of course, a good manager can always tell the difference between someone who is truly a slacker and those who take the occasional break to re-energize.

Passing the buck
Of course, employees aren't to blame for squandering time on the clock - at least that's what they say. Respondents seemed to cite every reason under the season for their lack of work - except their own poor work ethic. Check out the top five time-wasting excuses from the survey:
1. Didn't have enough work to do -- 33.2 percent
2. Underpaid for amount of work -- 23.4 percent
3. Co-workers distract me -- 14.7 percent
4. Not enough after-work time -- 12.0 percent
5. Other -- 16.7 percent

Five W's of wasting time
Now we know why we're wasting time and what we're doing to waste time; what about who is wasting time and where? Here are the top time-wasting states, according to the survey: 1. Missouri -- 3.2 hours per day 2. Indiana -- 2.8 hours per day 3. Kentucky -- 2.8 hours per day 4. Wisconsin -- 2.8 hours per day 5. Nevada -- 2.7 hours per day As these stats show, those wasting the most time are the youngsters in the office:

·  58-77 years old -- 0.50 hours per day

·  48-57 years old -- 0.68 hours per day

·  38-47 years old -- 1.19 hours per day

·  28-37 years old -- 1.61 hours per day

·  22-27 years old -- 1.95 hours per day
Bottom line: Stop reading this article and get back to work.

Rachel Zupek is a writer and blogger for CareerBuilder.com.