A recent survey conducted by Bamboo HR may make both employers and employee very happy and there is more than one reason to do so. This age of social networking has created quite many distractions at the work place opine many. But if the Bamboo HR survey is to be taken into account, this is surely not the case. When it comes to distractions, the break room or water cooler still tops the chart.

The survey explains that the employers need not worry about employees spending time on social networking sites because however strange it may sound, but when it comes to wasting time, employees haven’t changed that much. The survey that involved over 1000 US based full-time workers over the age of 18 found that the most popular way of stealing time from work for employees is still taking breaks to the office kitchen, water cooler or break room. (After all we human beings are still primal and keep hunting for food!J ).

The second most popular way of wasting time, was taking bathroom breaks followed at the third spot by gossiping and participating in small talks with co-workers. The fourth most popular time-waster came out to be communicating with family members via phone, email, text and social media. The next four in the top eight time wasters were, running personal errands or shopping online, communicating with friends, using social media for personal purposes, and watching television! (And then people complain about workplace stress!)

But this is not all. The most interesting finding of the survey was (and this may cheer some of the lower level employees!) that across the board, upper management and executives spend more time or to be more precise waste more time in each of these activities as compared to lower level employees (entry level, intermediate and middle management). So if you are busy checking out the latest update on a friend’s profile, chances are, your boss is also busy buying some piece of jewellery online for his wife!

In addition to all these findings the survey though pointed out that despite ranking low in the list of time wasters, social media is the most hindering activity when it comes to productivity. According to the survey, 68 percent of employees considered that using social media for personal, non-work-related reasons each day as a break/distraction from work tasks was appropriate, although what exactly should be the duration for ‘appropriate’ nobody could tell. So fret not friends, next time whenever your boss scolds you for wasting time, you know what the reality is!

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Author:Technology Blog