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Survey: Americans Love to Slack Off on the Job

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

They're on to us.

A new survey by Needham-based Salary.com and America Online shows the average American worker wastes about 2.09 hours a day at work, costing employers about $759 billion a year in pay for no apparent benefits.

It gets worse. They break it down by state.

The survey found Massachusetts workers on average fritter away 1.9 hours a day, costing local employers about $14 billion a year. And that doesn't even include lunch.

Bay Staters ranked 31st on the list.

Kentuckians are apparently the biggest workplace slackers, wasting about 4 hours a day per employee, according to the Salary.com-AOL survey of about 10,000 U.S. workers.

The top wile-away-the-day activity is surfing the Internet, according to the Salary.com-AOL survey.

The second favorite time waster is socializing with co-workers, followed by conducting personal business.

Nearly 4 percent of those surveyed admit to "spacing out" on the job. Other ways workers waste time: running errands off premises and making personal phone calls. '

"Applying for other jobs" ranked seventh on the slackers' things- to-do list.

The most common excuse layabouts use to justify their time wasting: "Don't have enough work to do."

Richard Cellini, chief researcher for Salary.com, said the survey results don't include lunch hours. There goes THATexcuse.

Cellini added that most employers assume that one non-lunch hour is wasted every day per employee. That assumption is often built into "salary models" used by employers, he said.

But human-resources personnel have long suspected that employees' time-wasting antics really amount to about 1.6 non-lunch hours lost per day, Cellini said.

Now they have data showing it could be in the two-hour range, he said.

Just for the record: Men and women waste about the same amount of time, though "HR managers surveyed suspected that women waste more time," according to the report.

Older workers waste less time than younger workers.

The insurance industry has the highest rate of clock-watchers.

The lowest?

Those in finance and banking.

Don't work too hard

A new survey paints an unflattering picture of American workers, claiming wasted time at work costs employers about $759 billion a year. (Graphic includes data on top time-wasting activities, top time-wasting states, and top time-wasting industries. For complete graphic, see Boston Herald microfilm or .pdf.)

SOURCE: Salary.com and American Online

STAFF GRAPHIC BY JEFF WALSH

Source: Boston Herald

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