‘Slackers’ may actually be more productive, study says
June 15, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Solutions
Everyone knows most office workers spend some time surfing the Web for personal reasons. But this might be a surprise: Those who do might be getting more work done than their more diligent peers.
That’s the conclusion of one recent Australian study, anyway.
More than 70% of employees with Internet access spend some amount of the day on non-work activities, according to the research by the University of Melbourne. And those who waste time in moderation (for less than 20% of their total time in the office) are on average 9% more productive than those who use their computers for nothing but work.
Why is that? Because employees function better when they take short, frequent breaks, say the researchers who conducted the study. They often lose concentration and need to zone out for a few minutes to get it back.
Another possible factor: The most productive employees are the ones who have the time to surf the Internet.
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Tags: productivity, slackers, Web use
June 18th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
As the IT Director of a large company, I found after installing a web monitoring tool, all employees under the age of 25 years or younger went from 23% productivity to over 70% productivity when the social sites and the video server sites became blocked and monitored.
I am not a great fan of the “big brother” watching concept but stopping the amount of personal time surfing, We gained massive amounts of bandwidth and employee productivity.
Maybe these great minds need to do a study in the USA on the younger “internet addicited” generation.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Frank said: I found after installing a web monitoring tool, all employees under the age of 25 years or younger went from 23% productivity to over 70% productivity when the social sites and the video server sites became blocked and monitored.
RandomReader: I’m an IT Director myself, but just because social Internet use has dropped off doesn’t mean we’ve gained employee productivity. We’ve reclaimed potential productive time but that doesn’t mean it will be used in productive pursuits. We may have just created more people who are dissatisfied with the company and now have more time to figure out how to take revenge.
June 24th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
There are simply too many factors to conduct an experiment with meaningful results.
Years ago I helped fine tune a system designed to increase employee productivity. We were baffled by the results. Productivity remained about the same months after the system implementation.
The culprit – employees were using the time savings mostly on personal matters.
I often wonder, for each employee inclined to be more productive, how many are less productive in the same context? Frank’s real-world experience seems to trump the results of the “study”.
Frank, how do you define and measure productivity in your company?
August 26th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I guess surfing the web to keep your mind free from work is good to refresh your outlook. After some time, working will be great if you enjoy every minute of it.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The study pointed out that these are the workers who spend 20% or less of their time on the internet on personal matters. These who spend the majority of their time surfing the web are, as a general rule, going to be much less productive than those who spend 20% or less.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 am
In a 1980’s tech school, a professor said when you are stuck; take a break (coffee, bathroom) and when you come back, the solution may present itself in a different way. I agree there is some video surfing that is a waste of life and should be curtailed at work. As a programmer, I have learned by experience that if I have a sudden idea that is “off subject” and I try to shove it back on the stack, it grates on me until I find the answer at home. If I look up the answer immediately, my mind can fully dedicate itself to the project. Most importantly is my chair. I sit on an old broken chair (height adjust failed, and it’s hard). I find that if I sit to still for too long (hours), my legs start to bother me and I spend time trying to figure out to get out of the chair. I found a big exercise ball (on my dime) works when the boss is not around and my productivity goes up. Also, old hardware tends to burn up a lot of my time and the minutes I am forced to wait, so I surf on another computer until the compile is done (the Indian help desks have new computers). Next is office noise, one job there was a constantly yakking phone salesperson outside my room. After a few days, I could do his spiel as well. Interesting, just thought of it . . . Surfing and moving around may be a symptom of a bad environment and “cost savings”?