by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: September 21, 2009   Last Updated: June 20, 2011

People waste time at work when they do not have the resources that they need to make progress in their tasks. People waste time at work when they do not have competent supervision who can remove roadblocks to manage and assign workload.

People waste time at work when management at two or three levels higher is not paying attention to the basics of workload management, which includes areas where employees are finding loopholes to exploit. The exploitation can be in the form of absence from the work area, dragging out tasks that can be completed more quickly or engaging in social or other pursuits under cover of work.

MANAGEMENT CONTRIBUTION:

If employees are chronic time wasters, it is often because some employees will exploit management inattention. If there are large numbers of true idlers and slackers, then someone should notice that productivity is very low in relation to the number of people at work!

There is no excuse for a manager with less than 150 employees to not be able to identify idle, absentee, or slacking workers, to determine the root cause of the problem, and implement action to correct the root cause in a way that prevents recurrence.

One example of the root cause of idleness and time wasting lies in kinks that form in the chain of tasks. If someone from another department is not producing the results that an employee needs in order to complete their part of the task, then the supervisor or manager might need to work outside the department in order to identify and correct what is causing the backlog.

Another example lies in failure to provide the required resources. One resource is assigned workload that gives a steady stream of tasks for the employee to do. Another resource is providing stable and mature cross departmental relationships that allow workers to resolve backlogs and problems on their own. An environment of political hostility between departmental managers, combined with disrupting communications and relationships other departments is an example of managerial failure resulting in denial of resources.

Yes, people waste time at work. But in most cases, employees are able to waste time at work because their supervisors and managers are either causing problems or are not monitoring and investigating productivity issues. 

EMPLOYEE CONTRIBUTION:

How do the real players in time wasting do it? The classic technique is to establish a false "time frame" for getting tasks done. The expanded and untrue time frame for producing

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