Top Ten Productivity Killers

Technology tops the list as the biggest time waster at work

How many hours are employees actually working at work? Between texting friends, taking smoke breaks and checking social media employees waste at least one hour of time every day according to a study by CareerBuilder.

Not surprisingly, personal use of technology registered as the biggest time waster. Among respondents, 24 percent admitted to spending a least an hour during a typical workday on personal calls, emails or texts and 21 percent said they spend one hour or more surfing the net for non-work related information.

But, technology wasn’t the only reason for unproductively, respondents said that noisy coworkers and meetings were also to blame. According to the Study there are ten primary time-wasters in the workplace.

The Top Ten Productivity Killers

1.  Cell phone/texting – 50 percent
2. Gossip – 42 percent
3. The Internet – 39 percent
4. Social media – 38 percent
5. Snack breaks or smoke breaks – 27 percent
6. Noisy coworkers – 24 percent
7. Meetings – 23 percent
8. Email – 23 percent
9. Coworkers dropping by – 23 percent
10. Coworkers putting calls on speaker phone – 10 percent

Don’t think your boss doesn’t know you’re texting your friends. Many employers (73 percent) said that they have put measures in place to mitigate wasting time at the office. Some of the tactics include:

Blocking certain internet sites at work – 36 percent

Prohibiting personal calls or personal use of cell phones – 25 percent

Monitoring emails and Internet usage – 22 percent

Scheduling lunch and break times – 19 percent

Allowing people to telecommute – 14 percent

Implementing an open space layout instead of cubicles – 13 percent

Limiting meetings – 12 percent

Restricting use of speaker phones if not in an office – 11 percent

For complete details on the study visit CareerBuilder.