Employee Slackers
The BostonWorks HR Blog tells us (here) that employees spend an average of 2 hours a day slacking off. This two hours is comprised of, among other activities, "surfing the Web, socializing with co-workers and simply "spacing out." What's not mentioned is the real hours that employees actually work. The United States has far less vacation time than time off in other countries, and employees are routinely connected to their employers with electronic leashes (cell phones, laptops, PDA's etc.), always expected to be available. In our global economy it is not unlikely that people will spend what would otherwise be off-time connecting with overseas colleagues. In fact, I can remember regular conference calls with colleagues in Hong Kong routinely scheduled for 10:00 pm.
Since I often get emails and phone calls from clients on weekends and well after 5:00, it seems to me that some of this internet surfing is probably paying bills, and doing what ever other personal activities aren't being done after hours as the employee is still connected to the office. I'm also thinking that I had hoped that as an economy we were moving away from measuring performance by face time and hours worked and measuring the value of our employees by the results they produce. Oh well.