According to a web survey by America Online and Salary.com, the average US worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per day, not counting lunch. Over the course of a year (and even after accounting for time employers expect to be wasted), that adds up to $759 billion on salaries for which companies receive no apparent benefit.
Survey respondents indicated that the No. 1 method for frittering away time at work is personal Internet use (e.g., e-mail, IM, online polls, interactive games, message boards, chatrooms, etc.). Personal Internet use was cited by 44.7 percent of respondents as their primary time-wasting activity at work. Socializing with co-workers was the second most popular form of wasting time at work (23.4 percent of respondents). Conducting personal business, “spacing out,” running errands and making personal phone calls were other popular time-wasting activities in the workplace.
A follow-up survey of corporate human resource managers found that it was expected that the average employee would waste about an hour per day, in addition to the worker’s lunch hour. The survey also found that men and women waste about the same amount of time per day. This is despite the fact that most HR managers surveyed suspected that women waste more time at work than men. Older employees wasted less time at work than younger employees.