Almost 70 per cent workers waste time finds survey

More than two thirds of workers said they wasted time every day while at work, mostly surfing news websites, a new study has found.

Thirty-four per cent said they wasted 30 minutes or less each day, 24 per cent said they wasted between 30 minutes and an hour, and 11 per cent said they wasted time for several hours.

As many as 21 per cent said they only slacked off one or two times per week, and 10 per cent said they never wasted any time at all, ‘News.com.au’ reported.

Most people (37 per cent) said their most frequent time-wasting websites were news sites.

The survey was conducted by a U.S. jobs website on more than 1,000 workers to find out what people do at work when they’re not actually working.

Twenty per cent said they never visited non-work related websites in the office, 14 per cent said they most often checked social media sites, and 12 per cent said on-line shopping sites were their biggest weakness.

Almost one-third of respondents said their bosses addressed the issue by blocking access to some personal sites at work.

However, more than half (52 per cent) obviously aren’t fazed, and are happy to get around any bans by using their smart phone or tablet.

The more educated people were the more likely to waste time, with 76 per cent with doctorate degrees admitting to time-wasting every day, compared with 59 per cent of people with a high school diploma or less.

Divorced people are also likely to be more diligent employees, with just 51 per cent wasting time daily compared with 75 per cent of singles and 75 per cent of people in relationships, survey by website >salary.com found.

The survey found that on Tuesday between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. is the most productive time while between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on a Friday, a person is least productive, the report said.

Most wasteful day is topped by Friday at 43 per cent, followed by Monday (16 per cent), Wednesday (9 per cent), Thursday (6 per cent) and Tuesday (3 per cent).

The biggest distraction in the workplace include: too many meetings (19 per cent), inefficient team members (17 per cent), co-workers (17 per cent), office politics (13 per cent), busy work (13 per cent), other jobs (11 per cent), and ‘my boss’ (8 per cent).