A new poll conducted among 751 employed adults in the United States sheds some interesting light on how much time employees waste at work using company technology for personal reasons. The poll was conducted by Harris Interactive for workplace communications firm The Marlin Company.
Sixty-one percent of workers polled said their co-workers spend an hour per day or less on personal use of company technology, including telephones, voicemail, email, the Internet, or computer games. And 42 percent said their fellow employees spend less than 30 minutes a day on such personal activities. Just 15 percent of those polled reported that fellow employees waste no time each day using technology at work, versus eight percent who said the time wasted is more than two hours a day.
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The results, however, varied by age and company size–the younger the respondent, and the larger the company, the more likely they were to report co-worker personal use of company technology. In particular, 27 percent of respondents aged 18 to 24 said their fellow employees spent an hour or more, versus just 17 percent of respondents aged 50 or older who reported a similar level of use. And, on average, employees in small companies with 1 to 100 employees reported that co-workers spent just 20 minutes a day using company technology for personal reasons, versus 30 minutes at companies with 1000 or more employees.
Have you wondered how much time employees spend shopping online while at work? According to the poll results, about a third of workers with online access have purchased products online while at work in the past year. The shopping results were about the same for men and women.