Some employees love to waste time when at work, and the problem has gotten worse with the explosion of social media and gaming on the internet. With so many different sites to browse, people are taking large chunks of time out of their day to post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or by simply browsing the web and shopping online. When this happens, your company is losing valuable time and money. So how do you spot employees who waste time?
Follow the five tips outlined here and you should have no problem improving your Employee Time Management efforts.
Holding Too Many Meetings
If a department within your company is constantly having meetings, this could be a major sign that your employees are wasting time. In a survey from salary.com, 19 percent of respondents said that meetings at work are the biggest waste of time. These meetings might be necessary for some departments, but others could be holding them for little to no reason at all. This means that your employees are sitting around shooting the breeze or having discussions that could be easily accomplished through a department-wide email, instead of completing their work.
Inefficient Team Members
The study also found that 17 percent of respondents said that their inefficient team members cause others to waste time at work. When you have several employees who do not complete their work on time or correctly, it can cause other team members to slack off or to struggle with completing their own work. Inefficient team members can have their bad habits rub off on others, which is always bad for your company’s culture.
Assigning Busywork
Supervisors or managers who tend to assign too much busywork can create an environment of procrastinators or employees who waste too much time. This reason received 13 percent of the vote from the survey respondents. Busywork is never fun to complete, especially for employees who have been with a company for quite some time or who have levels of experience that put them past this stage of their career. While it is sometimes a necessity, try to limit the amount of busywork you assign.
Quick Reduction of the Browser
Another tip for spotting the biggest time wasters at work is those who quickly close the browser on their desktop when anyone walks by their office or cubicle. This could be a sign that they are wasting time browsing the internet, sending emails from a personal account or simply playing games on the computer when they should be working. When this becomes a common practice, especially when supervisors walk by, it is a major sign that employees are wasting time at work.
Constant Chatter Amongst Employees
When employees are constantly talking to each other either on the phone, at the water cooler, in the hallways or at each other’s desks, it is another big sign of time wasters at work. Constant chatter can be detrimental to the culture of the company and it will hurt the chances of workers completing their work on time. It is alright for employees to become friends or acquaintances, but when they are always speaking with each other, especially about non-work related topics, then this is a sign of time being wasted at work.
For more on how to stop time wasting in the workplace, or to find employees with strong time management skills, contact the staffing experts at Advance Staffing Solutions today.
