Productivity is hugely important in any workplace but a recent survey suggested that smartphones may be to blame for lack of employee productivity.
“While we need to be connected to devices for work, we’re also a click away from alluring distractions from our personal lives like social media and various other apps,” said Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at
CareerBuilder.
The survey also cited other major productivity killers in the office according to employees, managers, and human resource professionals in a variety of different fields.
Those distractions included texting, the internet, gossip, social media, and meetings.
The majority of employees that were polled for this survey said they don’t have work emails on their smartphones but those who access their smartphone during work for non-work use, they spent their time on non-work related sites including, weather, news, shopping, gossip, adult, and dating.
Employers were also asked as part of this national survey to reveal the craziest thing they have caught an employee doing at work and they are all so outrageous we had to list every one. The answers were:
- Employee was working on a scrapbook.
- Employee was decorating a cubicle with chains of paper clips.
- Employee brought her equipment for her embroidery business from home and was making items for a craft show to sell.
- Employee was doing doughnuts in the parking lot in the snow.
- Employee brought in a kitten she found outside and tried to keep it quiet within a large purse.
- Employee was working on her child’s school project that included uncooked macaroni noodles.
- Employee was laying on a patient’s bed talking to the patient while the patient sat in her wheelchair
- Employee was watching YouTube videos of people shoving marshmallows in their mouth.
- Employee was doing some personal grooming in the break room.
- Employee was searching on craigslist for dates.
All kidding aside, the effects of the lack of productivity in the office can be far reaching and can include compromised quality of work, missed deadlines, and loss of revenue.
So what is the answer to ensuring that your smartphone doesn’t end up costing you your job?
“The connectivity conundrum isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be managed,” Haefner said.
“Have an open dialogue with employees about tech distractions, acknowledge their existence and discuss challenges/solutions to keeping productivity up.”