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Ways to Decrease Loss of Productivity from Employees

Ways to Decrease Loss of Productivity from Employees

How Time is Lost in the Workplace

Employers can easily fall victim to time being wasted in the workplace for many reasons. Here are some recent statistics on how employees are spending their time rather than performing their job.

Loss in Productivity

A 40% estimated loss is suffered by employers by employees performing non-work related internet surfing. Widespread misuse exists on social media networks at work with only 15% of businesses currently having a social media policy in place.

Over half of businesses completely prohibit the use of Facebook and Twitter while at work with 19% allowing business use only and 16% having limited personal use.

• 65% of employees say they have received a positive benefit from using social media.
• 70% of all internet porn traffic occurs during the nine to five workday.
• 31.2% of employees feel that it is appropriate to surf non-related sites every day.

How Time is Wasted

On average, employees spend half of their work hours online while in the office. Half of that time is spent surfing the web while 33% of the other time is spent socializing with co-workers. Additional one hour per day is spent making personal calls, taking long lunch breaks, and conducting personal business.

Monitor Usage

With the continued loss in time employers are sufferings, measures can be taken to ensure some form of monitoring takes place. This will help you target the specific areas of misuse while cracking down on lost productivity.

Almost half of employers currently track content using network level software and monitor emails along with stored computer files. Almost three quarters of organizations have monitor user software in place with almost half actually assign someone to manually read and review emails sent on company time. Companies can also choose to blacklist websites such as Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Doubleclick, Twitter, and more.

Email Misuse

Statistically, 33% of employees check their personal email a day with more than seven out of ten respondents saying they also check their personal email at work. Out of the 28% of employers who have fired employees for email misuse state it is in violation of a policy, was excessively accessed for personal use, and wasted time.

According to a survey of 568 companies, 14% of employees admitted to emailing confidential information over their systems and even worse 6% of workers have used email to transmit confidential customer data. As a result of these types of behaviors, a reported 34% of companies have reported losing sensitive information that had impacted their business.

Social Media Use

Facebook sits at the top of the list with 7 out of every 100 websites being accessed at work. The average time per day spent on Facebook is 55 minutes with 800 billion total minutes lost per month.

From a business standpoint, a fifth of companies do not see the need for a social media policy, however a quarter of companies have written and implemented a social media policy. An additional fifth are in the process of writing a social media policy with the remaining 36% saying that a policy is needed but not yet planned.

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