So a few days ago, I was taken aside by my boss and spoken to about the personal work I’d been squeezing in during work time. Granted, I had been spending some time doing my own personal web design work whilst I should’ve been doing other stuff, but on the salary he’s paying me, I unfortunately have to rely on getting design jobs on the side. We reached an agreement though and all’s sorted.

I suppose most employers are worried about time wastage. Understandably as they’re forking out the money to have a job done and they’re expecting it to get done. Salary.com has a survey on their site regarding time wastage/management.

The biggest distraction for respondents? Personal Internet use. 44.7% of the more than 10,000 people polled cited web surfing as their #1 distraction at work. Socializing with co-workers came in second at 23.4%. Conducting personal business, “spacing out,” running errands, and making personal phone calls were the other popular time-wasting activities in the workplace.

Top Time-Wasting Activities

1. Surfing Internet (personal use) – 44.7%
2. Socializing with co-workers – 23.4%
3. Conducting personal business – 6.8%
4. Spacing out – 3.9%
5. Running errands off-premises – 3.1%
6. Making personal phone calls – 2.3%
7. Applying for other jobs – 1.3%
8. Planning personal events – 1.0%
9. Arriving late / Leaving early – 1.0%
10. Other – 12.5%

It got me thinking though. There must be a whack load of people in my position…: People who’re having to ‘moonlight’ ie. source extra work on top of their 9-5 jobs to make ends meet.

I’m interested to know how you do it. Do you come in early? Take stuff home? Work during your lunch?

The survey by Salary.com showed that money lost annually from employees who do other work or just don’t work at all during work time, cost American companies $756 billion.

Whoa.

Now maybe if they distributed that $756 billion amongst their employees in the form of salary increases, they wouldn’t have the time wastage problem because employees would have the financial motivation to put in a full days work and not stuff around.

What’s the chances that’ll happen though…