Everything that employees do on company computers and company time matters! And procrastination at a time when employees should be working especially matters. In this article, we're going to discuss the common ways of wasting company time and how to solve these problems using computer monitoring software.
The simple truth: employees waste time at work
Distractions at work are endless. Employees are bombarded with thousands or even millions of new photos, tweets, videos, blog posts, etc. As a matter of fact, we have access to more than two Zettabytes (two trillion gigabytes) of data. Such data deluge, inevitably creates an atmosphere of productivity loss and procrastination.
What are the biggest time wasters?
1. Google
In 2013, a survey, conducted by Salary.com, named Facebook as the most distracting website. However, the 2014 winner is Google. Of course the search engine activity goes along with general Internet usage since most people use it to find information. In some cases, Google searches can be work related, but in most cases employees look for non work-related information.
2. Social media
A business's social media presence provides the perfect opportunity to reach out to its customers and employees. At the same time, social media procrastination is at second place when it comes to wasting time.
3. Meetings
Not all time wasting activities come from a computer. There are some work-related too, like meetings.
From a work standpoint, meetings are often considered to be the most time-wasting. Consider this: most employees have around 62 meetings a month. And ½ of meeting time is considered wasted, which means that over a month, employees spend 31 hours in unproductive meetings.
4. Emails
On average, employees check their email 36 times in an hour! And it takes 16 minutes to refocus after handling incoming email. You also lose 10 IQ points by fielding constant email. It is the same as missing the whole night of sleep.
How to solve the biggest problems using computer monitoring software?
Computer monitoring is one of the most controversial and widely spoken topics. On one hand, employees seem to waste time when surfing the web for non work-related purposes. On the other hand, some time surfing the web can actually help employees to unwind and boost their productivity.
But you have to keep it all under control.
In order to make sure that employees don`t waste company time and that their productivity doesn`t suffer, start using a computer monitoring software:
With its help you will be able to:
- keep the Internet usage under control;
- find the most time-consuming websites and applications, see their impact on employee productivity;
- find out which employees are not cut for the work they`re doing, move them to another position or provide training.
- monitor offline activities: computer monitoring software also tracks the time when employees are away from their computers. You might find out that you hold too many meetings or that some employees visit the meeting that they have no relation to.
That`s it! Nothing difficult. You let your employees use the Internet and you use the Internet for business purposes.
