« Magic Street | Main | Hawaii Forgot History »
August 08, 2005
Workers are Wasteful!
Today, the company I work for posted this article on wasted time, which is apparently derived from an AOL / Salary.com survey of time wasted by employees.
I've watched this article work its way through the posting process, and ever since I first read it, I've been dying to comment... well, it's up, and I did...
The article is very interesting, and makes some good points. But it also purportes to know the precise financial cost of "time wasters" to the nation's economy.
I think that part of the study results is wildly inaccurate, and I said so.
In fact, here's what I said:
While it is entirely possible that 45% of workers waste time on the internet.
And it is also very likely waste way more time that managers expect.
But, it is not fair to say that this comes to the tune of $759 billion per year, and here's why:
Many employees work on a salary (rather than hourly) basis. These employees are not hired to work a particular number of hours, but instead are to complete certain tasks.
Generally speaking, we all assume salaried workers work 8 hour days -- and so, if someone wasted 2 hours a day, that would be 25% waste.
But this survey does not take into account how many extra hours are worked by the average salaried employee.
In addition, it presupposes that workers would be just as effective during the time they did work if they never wasted any time -- a supposition that is probably untrue.
Also, if you want to dock employees for time spent surfing the internet at work, you should credit them for time spent working (or even checking work e-mail or voice-mail) at home and on weekends.
I'm not suggesting that time isn't being wasted, or that it's unimportant. Just that I don't buy the $759 billion number.
What say you? Really, I want to know!
— The Shelanman
Posted by andrew at August 8, 2005 06:47 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)