Price Tag for Lost Productivity: $544 Billion. I’m always intrigued about how these calculations are made through a simple survey.
How about some stats from the article?
Employees spend an average of 1.86 hours per eight-hour workday on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks, the survey found.
More than half (52%) of the 2,706 people surveyed admitted that their biggest distraction during work hours is surfing the Internet for personal use. Other distractions cited by respondents included socializing with co-workers (26.3%), running errands outside the office (7.6%) and spacing out (6.6%).
I remember seeing something about this survey since “spacing out” made me laugh. I’ve been on some phone screens where I seriously wondered if the person on the other end was spacing out as they talked. But that is an anecdote for another day.
One last finding that is certainly worth noting:
The 2005 survey also found that older employees wasted less time at work than their younger counterparts.