A slumping economy apparently produces sluggish workers.
More than 6,400 employees reported wasting 2.3 hours ? or 25 percent ? of their average 9.2-hour, start-to-finish workday, according to a recent survey from Leadership IQ,a Washington-based management training and research firm.
“The more stressed people get, the less proactive they become,” said Mark Murphy, chairman of Leadership IQ.
News of a national credit crisis, a housing slump and surging gas prices has increased worker anxiety, Murphy said. The result has been more time wasted at work, with employees spending less time working and more on the Internet and chatting with co-workers.
Survey respondents said they searched the Internet for information on career improvement and personal finance, daydreamed about negative topics, talked to co-workers and surfed the Internet for entertainment.
“What was a little surprising was how people were wasting their time,” Murphy said.
In last year?s survey, prevalent time-wasters were using the Internet for shopping, entertainment and e-mail, and chatting with co-workers and daydreaming about positive topics. Also, respondents reported wasting less time ? about 1.6 hours a day ? in last year?s survey.
“The entertainment piece of wasting time is still there,” Murphy said. “That will always be the case.”
Murphy said its the responsibility of managers to set clear expectations and establish open communications with employees to avoid wasted time.
For St. John Properties, social networking and music streaming sites proved to be bad for business.
With many of its employees using the Internet to surf Web sites during the work day, the Baltimore-based real estate development and investment firm recently installed a Web-monitoring system to increase worker productivity and bandwidth. The company notified employees of the change.
“It was affecting our ability to do business,” said George Kammer, IT specialist for St. John Properties. “We just go off track a little bit.”
St. John Properties? IT team blocked several sites from employees, including MySpace, FaceBook and several music sites, Kammer said.
Representatives from Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price Group said the company has guidelines in place about employee Internet usage, but they declined to go into more detail.
Coming Wednesday: March Madness bounces its way into the office.
