This morning I received a press release with the enticing subject line of “Procrastinating professionals costing businesses up to 36 working days a year.. as workers admit to spending parts of their working days texting, shopping and browsing social media.”
Well blow me that came as a MASSIVE surprise.
I won’t quote the source of the survey as frankly I really like the guys who sent it to me. It goes on to share the rather confusing statistic that “one in four (23.4%) UK professionals admit to spending up to 21 hours each month doing personal activities during worktime.” That’s the equivalent of seven weeks each year. It goes on to say “Interestingly, the study found that two thirds (62%) of workers believe that employees have the right to procrastinate every now and then.“
At this point I thought I was reading something from The Onion.
In case you are interested employees were also asked to reveal what they do when procrastinating at work, the top five activities include:
- Texting or using instant messaging – 42%
- Browsing social media – 25.2%
- Replying to personal emails – 23.1%
- Online shopping – 17.2%
- Making phone calls to friends or family – 10.1%
Woah, shut the front door. BREAKING NEWS. Back in the day when I had a real job the team I worked with “procrastinated” by chatting in the kitchen about Coronation Street, browsing Argos catalogue at our desks (we didn’t have the internet back then) and occasionally taking a phone call from our mums/kids/spouse. On the other hand we did regularly get into work early to set up meetings, stay late to make calls, screen CVs in the evenings..
Back to the survey “Managers should consider discouraging phone use during work times and instead creating set times such as breaks where employees can look at their phone and do their personal errands.” Perhaps, like in the industrial revolution, staff should be required to pop their hands up when they need a toilet break too.
Anyway, that’s enough procrastination from me. I’m off to multi-task and achieve what I need to like a grown up.
