Employees engage in all sorts of activities that waste time—excessive meetings, coworker interactions, office politics and fixing mistakes are a few that might be more or less tolerated. But according to recent survey data, the biggest culprit is surfing the world wide web! That’s a HUGE distraction—currently there are 2 zettabytes of data out online (that’s equivalent to 2 TRILLION gigabytes!!).
According to a Salary.com survey, the majority of employees regularly spend time surfing on websites unrelated to work. What’s the harm in that?
Every hour wasted has direct impact on your bottom line. Time IS Money.
Here’s the breakdown by hours of time wasted each WEEK:
Time Wasted % of Employees
<1 hour 39%
1-2 hours 29%
2-5 hours 21%
6-10 hours 8%
10+ hours 3%
Clearly employees waste time online for no good reason. But for a business owner, every 30 minutes adds up to big bucks! Let’s say, on average, you pay your employees $14 an hour—not minimum wage, but certainly not a C-Suite salary either. And let’s assume that they work 250 days a year. Time wasted just for ONE employee adds up to a lot of mullah!
Basketball season is coming up over the next couple of months. Did you know that March Madness, alone, costs US companies well over $175 million in wasted time just in the first two days of the tournament?
And if you think basketball is bad, what about pornography? 70% of all online pornography is accessed between 9 AM and 5 PM. Pornographic websites are notorious for carrying malicious viruses- including CryptoWall.
What Can You Do?
- Set their expectations- If you don’t want people on social media or other non-work-related websites, say so. Make sure your employees understand what you expect of them. If you don’t want time wasted, you’ve got to be up front with your employees.
- Do you want your employees talking about your business on social media? Another good concern. If you want them tweeting about your latest promotion, you can’t expect them to check what their followers are doing in the process.
- Remember that Time IS Money. The more time you allow for your people to waste online is directly coming out of your wallet.
Tracking and Blocking—Another strategy is to block undesired stuff from the start! Track where your employees are going on your network and if you see sites that you don’t want them visiting, communicate it with them and then block those sites from your network.
And to get the best advice for your situation, I encourage you contact us immediately. We can provide you a customized solution to eliminating wasted work hours. Give Cheryl a call and she will get the ball rolling for you.
