The productivity-killing habit costing your business 34 days every year

Ever find yourself logging on to your Amazon account at work for a sneaky bit of retail therapy between phone calls? Or how about having a cheeky chat with friends on your mobile to break up those boring emails?

New research from CV-Library suggests you’re not alone, as almost a quarter of Brits admit spending 21 hours each month on personal activities during working hours.

However, those hours soon add up – working out to be 2.8 full working days per month, or almost 34 days per year.

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Employees were also asked to reveal what they do when procrastinating at work. The top five activities include:

1. Texting or using instant messaging – 42%

2. Browsing social media – 25.2%

3. Replying to personal emails – 23.1%

4. Online shopping – 17.2%

5. Making phone calls to friends or family – 10.1%

The reasons why employees like to procrastinate paint a sad picture. The survey found that one in three (34.1%) workers do it because they’re bored, 23.3% claim it’s because they don’t like their job and a further 22% say it’s because they have little to do.

Lee Biggins, Founder and Managing Director of CV-Library, said that it is important that the right steps are taken to tackle this problem before it worsens.

“While we all get distracted from time to time, it’s worrying to learn that so many UK workers admit to procrastinating because they’re bored or unhappy at work,” he said.

“Employers should consider how they can increase employee engagement through training and presenting staff with new opportunities in the workplace.”

However, Speaking in PsyPost, Shani Pindek of the University of Haifa suggested that allowing employees to procrastinate by ‘cyberloafing’ (surfing the web during working hours) prevents staff from doing other more destructive things when there is a lull in their working day.

“Cyberloafing is a rather natural response to workplace boredom and it is different from other (more harmful) forms of counterproductive work behaviours,” she said.

Pindek and her team found that, in certain stressful situations, engaging in cyberloafing partially buffered the negative effects of workplace stress. “Cyberloafing is a rather natural response to workplace boredom and it is different from other (more harmful) forms of counterproductive work behaviours,” she said.

“Giving workers new responsibilities every now and then can help to switch up their daily tasks so that they don’t become bored,” added Biggins. “Employers need to consider this type of engagement if they hope to avoid workers finding more interesting opportunities elsewhere.”