Mediaboss Marketing

Chennai, March 14:

Projects getting delayed? Employee productivity down? Blame it on social-networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Salary.com surveyed around 3,200 people visiting its site from February to March to find out which sites they visit the most.

Of the people who took the survey, 39 per cent said they spend a mere hour a week or less on non-work related items. That's followed by 29 per cent who spend up to two hours a week wasting time on the computer at work, and 21 per cent who waste up to five hours a week. Only 3 per cent of respondents spend 10 hours or more on personal tasks while at work in a given week.

It came as no surprise that Facebook was the most visited site. The social media behemoth with nearly 850 million users worldwide is visited by 41 per cent of respondents. That's followed closely by LinkedIn at 37 per cent, Yahoo! at 31 per cent, Google+ at 28 per cent and Amazon.com with 25 per cent. Twitter ranked near the bottom with a measly 8 per cent. And even though Pinterest, an online pinboard, has been garnering a lot of media attention lately, only 4 per cent of the respondents currently use the service, said the survey. The US-based Salary.com provides on-demand talent management, payroll and compensation solution to help companies and people manage pay and performance.

A number of Indian companies, too, restrict giving access to employees to sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Leave alone access to such sites, there is no Internet connection in some of the software development centres.

Systems are wired for coding. It is very confidential work as banking systems, for global banks are involved. There is no Internet access in development centres for security reasons, bugs and other threats, said an official of a Chennai-based software company who did not wish to be identified.

So if employees are wasting time instead of working, it stands to reason they might be doing it because they are underpaid, right? Wrong.

Of the top six reasons why employees waste time at work, being underpaid ranked dead last at 18 per cent. Most employees 35 per cent said they waste time at work because they are not challenged enough. That was followed closely by the 34 per cent who claimed they waste time because their hours are too long, 32 per cent whose company gives them no incentive to work harder, and 30 per cent who are unsatisfied, said the survey.

raja@thehindu.co.in

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Blame social networking for falling employee productivity