Five things that waste your employees' time, you have to avoid.

In 2014 Harris poll and CareerBuild conducted a survey to find out how employees waste their time at work, and thousands of managers and employees participated in this survey the search results were very useful and entertaining at the same time as follows

• 50% use mobile phones and text messages.

• 42% waste time gossiping.

• 39% use the Internet to waste time.

• 27% during a coffee or smoking break.

• 24% are distracted by annoying co-workers.

• 23% in meetings.

• 23% email.

• 23% hide in order to scare others at work (squirt!).

• 15% because of co-workers making calls on loudspeakers.

One study found that about 80% of employees waste work time, ranging from half an hour to more than 3 hours a day. This means that at least 1 in 5 employees waste at least one third of their working time, if we calculate this time as a whole year; it shows that up to 780 hours a year or at least 98 working days are lost. This, of course, does not count the material cost of this.

According to studies and statistics on this, the most time-wasting sector is the government sector, with 25% of employees spending time browsing the Internet and social networking sites, followed by the services and energy sector, and health workers being the least time-wasting employees.

Why are employees wasting their working time?

Sociologist Rania Haj Ali says: "The waste of working hours is due to the personality of the employee himself, his sense of responsibility and the employee's feeling towards the institution in which he works, and the waste of working hours is an indication of the lack of respect for the institution itself, or the institution does not provide the right environment for the employee and gives him sufficient financial income."

On this matter, salary.com website conducted a questionnaire on why employees waste working hours, and of course the answer was not what I expected "because they are paid less", on the contrary, employees received 18% lower salaries. The ratios were as follows:

• 35% of employees waste time at work because they do not face sufficient challenges.

• 34% claim that they waste time because their working hours are too long.

• 32% believe that their company does not give them any incentive to work harder.

• 30% of them are simply dissatisfied.

• 23% of participants waste time at work just because they are bored.

With so many employees doing something other than working every day, what should the employer do?!

Blocking social media and personal sites is not helpful!

30% of respondents to the salary.com website survey said that employers ban social media sites at work such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Unfortunately for the efforts of companies blocking these sites, the efforts of companies that block these sites are not at all fruitful, because 60% of those surveyed said they simply use their personal phones and mobile devices to access these sites during working hours.

But quite the contrary, this could harm the company's interest, as many employees will tend to transfer their activity to their personal devices, which are often less secure and completely uncensored.

The employee also seems not to care, with 79% of respondents saying they simply don't care whether employers ban certain websites, and that it won't affect their decision to work there.

Many fruitless meetings

Although companies believe that the biggest reasons for the loss of working time are the Internet, employees have another say; according to 47% of respondents to the salary.com site questionnaire, the biggest waste of time is having to attend too many meetings, followed by dealing with the office's policies by 43%.

How do you keep your employees' time working more efficiently?

• Short breaks are very useful.

Seveny-one percent of respondents — nearly three-quarters of respondents — said they believed short breaks throughout the day were very useful. Those surveyed indicated that employees were likely to be more productive with short stops to check Facebook and Twitter.

• Develop a positive business culture within the office

When your employees know exactly what is expected of them and see that everyone is working towards one common goal, this will help encourage hard work and waste time.

• Educating employees

Educating employees about the risks of wasting working time and its consequences for both the organization and the employee may be a better way to deal with this problem.

• Teach them the ability to say "no" or "delegate."

A good team wants to be supportive and useful to their members, but sometimes not saying "no" to side requests and during the working day can be counterproductive. He therefore encouraged staff to set firm limits and focus on their tasks and objectives.

He used team-building sessions to train them in polite and determined ways to say "no" so that they could do so without alienating their colleagues.

• Track team time

  There are a lot of applications that monitor productivity and measure time, measuring wasted time and measuring the number of working hours and productivity at work, such as Time doctor. You can use such apps with the team and find out what team members are wasting their working time, because the beauty of this app or the annoying which is closer to you _ depending on whether you are an employee or employer _ takes a screenshot of the side applications that the employee uses outside the app and sends them to his bosses at work.

• Quick tips:

• 1. Walk around the department or office several times a day and this will give you a chance to learn about activities that waste staff time.
  2. Encourage employees to turn off email notifications while they're working on a task, and train them to devote part of the time once or twice a day to dealing with new messages.
  3. Evaluate employees according to their production and not for the time they spend at work.
  4. Train employees in time management skill.
  5. Hold shorter meetings, or set certain days for meetings.
  6. Be flexible in determining working hours.
     If you are an employee of a company and want to eliminate such a bad habit in order to increase your productivity, here are these solutions:

     • Stay away from gossip.

   

It's hard not to fall into this trap, because statistics show that gossip eats up to about an hour a day in some offices. The easiest solution is to get away when gossip begins.

• Use soundproof earbuds.

If an annoying coworker forbids you from being productive, wear noise-proof earphones, or ask to move your office to another quieter location.

• Internet cutter at work.

Stay completely off the Internet while you're working, as long as you don't need it to get a job done.

• Take time to deal with email.

Checking dozens of emails every day can be a waste of time, so instead of reading and responding to each message when it comes in, take time every day to deal with these messages as long as they are not urgent.

• Get rid of unnecessary meetings.

If meetings drain your productivity, do your best to get rid of unnecessary meetings. If you're really not required to be there, skip it.

Sometimes it may seem impossible to complete your business list during just an eight-hour working day, but if you're hard at getting rid of those who waste your time, you may discover that your day is getting smoother and you'll get a lot of achievements.

In the end, if you are an employer try to understand that employees are human factors and not just work machines, they need comfort, encouragement and other things that increase their productivity.

If you are an employee, remember that the working time – for which you are paid for money – is honesty and you must maintain the secretariat.