My wife thinks I waste too many hours here. I of course disagree! Interesting Zoomba, I wonder if anyone has done a study of the impact of WOW on workforce?

Take away their toys and they will simply move on to wasting time elsewhere. People wasted time before their was electricity and will continue to do so until time is up.

ya know there's a really, really simple solution for this. tell employees they're refrained from using the internet during billing hours for personal use. if they want to burn paid company time, let them twiddle their thumbs instead of using company equipment to do it.

i get my breaks, i get my lunch, i don't see why I should be costing my firm money to screw around. anyways, the more I screw around, the less productive I am, and that just makes bonus checks that much smaller each year.

Absolutely, technology has only given us the ability to track the time wasted. Peope are going to do what people are going to do, no if's, and's or but's about it.

In this article you will see that American's are 4th in the world as far as productivity per hour, but rank number 1 because Americans work more hours.

US workers "most productive" in the world
By Ken Fisher | Published: September 01, 2003 - 12:53PM CT


Although people should understand that the time and the equipment belong to the company and they have a right to block/censor any material they choose and the employee should not be upset about this. And employers should know that there is a time to micro-manage thier employees, and a time not to.

Happy employees are more productive than the unhappy employee.

Wonder how many hours are wasted Daydreaming?   

The main problem I have with these kind of 'studies' is the presumption that the time used is actually taking away from something.

If your job involves sitting at a computer (this being the kind of job that would allow for frequent diversions of the likes of facebook), then for the most part, your job is probably task oriented, which means that you should be measured by the tasks you complete, and not so much by how much time it takes you (or how much time you might use browsing, or getting a snack, or getting a smoke, or talking to co-workers).

There is no 'magical' ideal of productivity that will be achieved if we all put our noses down and work unceasingly. If you're working, you almost always have a specific job (or set of jobs) to do, and you either do your job(s), or you don't. That's it.

And especially in some creative jobs, there will be times where it may look like you're doing nothing at all, but you're thinking about your task, or you're taking your mind off of it, so that your mind can get around it while you aren't looking (It's pretty amazing how many problems get solved when you aren't actively *trying* to work on them).

This is just another 'numbers out of the ass' kind of analysis. Even if they removed every avenue of distraction, and stood over these workers with a gun to their heads, they would not reap the value they claim to have 'lost'. As a point of fact, in that case, they will more than likely lose productivity.

You can never get people to break away from the age old saying "Time is money".

As an employer I would get a little bothered myself. If a saw an employee of mine doing something personal and being payed by me to do it. Though I completely agree with what you say. People that usually end up having a free time during thier work schedule to waste time are people that have a job where the objective is the task completed not the task per hour.

Low income jobs have less time to waste then higher end jobs. So this just tells you if you want to waste time and get paid doing it. Get a degree, or get a specific skill that allows this.

If an employer wants to place specific (or general) restrictions on what an employee does during work hours, I'm not particularly concerned about that, that would go with the job.

My issue is with the rectum sourced 'loss' numbers that these kind of studies always come up with.

Just like all of the other studies that claim to estimate loss from one cause or the other (piracy, slacking, browsing, facebook, etc.), the researchers are more interested in what they 'want' the issue to cost, rather than what it might actually cost in the real world.

I don't care if one of my employees is doing 'personal' work on the clock, as long as they do their job. Flexibility, trust, and freedom make a person **** FAR ***** more productive than distrust and micro-management. We're talking orders of magnitude here. People are far more productive, and have a much better attitude, if you don't treat them like robots (or a machine part in your personal Rube Goldberg construct), and thats *far* more valuable than some ephemeral 'wasted cost' due to not being slavishly devoted to work.

If I were an employer faced with time wasters, I'd introduce corporal punishment to the workplace (er, like the canings and/or the swift clip around the ears we had at school) and handsome bonuses for those with high productivity.

Oh...and fer anyone requiring a second clip 'round tha ear'oles, instant dismissal by way of a good keel'aulin'.