Time wasters of the world unite

Are you finding that Facebook is eating up time when you’re at home when you should be revising? Perhaps it’s as well that most schools try to block the site and that way we get some work done. One recent blog looked at how firms might try to monitor their employees that work from home and here’s a couple of other observations about ICT time wasting.

I was motivated to put these thoughts together after reading Google Pac-Man eats up work time.

After a playable version of the classic video game was put on Google’s front page to celebrate 30 years since the launch of Pac-Man in Japan, it’s thought that the game has gobbled up almost five million hours of work time - within three days! That’s equal to about 549 years. Assuming people are paid £17.50 an hour, this equates to about £84m in lost productivity, a study said. For that money, it would be possible to hire all Google’s employees and put them to work for about six weeks.

The firm who have come up with the estimate, ‘Recue Time’, believes this is a relatively low figure because only a minority realised that the game on the Google homepage was playable.

I know employers fret about time wasted on eBay, Facebook and games, I’m reminded of a study by Intel (from 3-4 years ago) that suggested another great thief of time is Outlook. I spend far too long email fiddling and the volume of mail I receive grows inexorably greater each year.

Intel even tried a ‘no e-mail day’. On Fridays, 150 of its engineers reverted to more old-fashioned means of communication. In reality, e-mail wasn’t exactly banned, but engineers were encouraged to talk to each other face to face or pick up the phone rather than rely on e-mail. I’m not sure how long the experiment lasted.

Email volumes are growing and another study conducted by researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Paisley found that one third of users felt stressed by the heavy volume of e-mail they had to deal with. When e-mail behaviour was tracked it was found that many were checking their inbox as often as 30 to 40 times per hour.

Some experts believe ‘no e-mail days’ can be useful particularly for those workers who need to concentrate for long periods of time. Others argue that instead of bringing e-mail to a grinding halt at the end of the week - which of course just means that most of Monday is wasted catching up - companies need to educate their staff on the appropriate use and management of e-mail.

This issue is only going to grow. Email me your views……