Survey Claims Time Wasted at Work Declines

While it is generally accepted that older workers waste less time than younger workers, a 2007 online survey conducted by Salary.com revealed that all employees continue to waste time at work, though, less time than in 2005.

According to Salary.com findings, employers can attribute the 19 percent decrease in wasted time each day — from 2.09 hours in 2005 to 1.7 hours in 2007 — to a growing economy, increased productivity, and a tight labor market that has left workers with more to do and less time to waste.

Bill Coleman, Salary.com’s chief compensation officer, estimates that the lost time represents between $400 billion and $500 billion in lost productivity and is in addition to the wasted time that is inherent to many jobs.

While dislike of their jobs and a desire to pursue non-work interests were among the reasons that respondents gave for wasting time at work, long-term boredom tops the list, followed by feeling underpaid, and a too-long workday.  According to Coleman, long-term boredom with jobs is a result of lack of feedback, focus, understanding, and communication regarding performance expectations.  Wasting time, because of feeling underpaid, is based on a mind-set similar to stealing goods from the workplace.  Finally, according to Coleman, people citing too-long workdays might be reflecting dissatisfaction with the new work environment where technology ties employees to the job beyond what they expect.

With the U.S. becoming more of a knowledge-based workforce, it is difficult to track the way and how much people work.  Management should be concerned that the amount of work delivered is exceeding expectations so that inefficiencies of time spent by each employee has minimal effect on the business objectives. 

Wasted time, according to the more than 2,000 survey respondents, includes activities such as use of the Internet for personal reasons (the most popular non-work activity), socializing with coworkers, personal phone calls, office politics, long-lunch breaks, spacing out, pursuing hobbies, and fixing other people’s work.

Source: Kathy Gurchiek, Society for Human Resource Management, www.shrm.org. July 31, 2007.

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Efficiency and Stress - Striking the Right Balance

Stress is defined as a physiological response to any change that alerts the adaptive fight-or-flight response in the brain and body. On one hand, stress can be the boost of energy and motivation that produces clear thinking, creative insights and success. On the other hand, stress can be mentally, physically, and emotionally harmful. A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study reports that about "40% of all workers today feel overworked, pressured, and squeezed to the point of anxiety, depression, and disease." The cost to American businesses is estimated at $300 billion per year for stress related illness, health care, and related costs.

In their 2003 book The Breakout Principle, Herbert Benson, M.D. and William Proctor present simple techniques workers can employ to regulate the amount of stress they feel, increase productivity, and avoid burnout. In their book they cite a 1908 study on efficiency and stress, noting that performance increases as stress increases to a point, and then efficiency falls off markedly. They suggest the breakout principle to combat this phenomenon.

The breakout principal has four steps:

1. Struggle mightily with a thorny problem to the point of stress.
2. Walk away from the problem and relax the mind and body.
3. Gain a sudden insight about the problem (an "Aha!" moment).
4. Return to the new normal state of increased performance and confidence.

About a fourth of people trained in this process can reliably reach the breakout stage, and the principal can be used with groups as well as individuals. Dr. Benson states, "It is possible to leverage this invaluable biological tool when we want to or need to." He is the founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts where extensive research and application of these relaxation principles are conducted.

Source: "Are You Working Too Hard?" Harvard Business Review, November 2005.

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Costs of Workplace Injuries Increase

The costs of serious workplace injuries increased by $3.5 billion from 1998 to 2002, according to the 2004 Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index.  The index investigates the number and causes of work-related injuries and offers solutions to help firms reduce such injuries.  The top three injuries were:

• overexertion,
• falls on the same level, and
• bodily reaction (i.e., an injury from bending, climbing, slipping, or tripping without falling).

Payments to injured workers and their medical providers grew from $46.1 billion in 2001 to $49.6 billion in 2002, with the top three injuries representing 50 percent of the total costs of serious workplace injuries.

Tom Leamon, Ph.D., P.E., director of the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, which develops the annual index, said companies should place a greater focus on workplace ergonomics, set targets to limit such injuries, and regularly measure performance.

Source: www.iienet.org, February 22, 2005.

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Space Racers: Prepare for Take-off! Congress Approves Commercial Flight Ammendments Act

December 2004 - Imagine having the ability to easily swim or run uphill, as if totally weightless. That's the proposal set forth by Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, LLC (www.scaled.com), who envisions a unique resort that is out of this world - literally. His plan to construct the first resort in outer space just received a major push from the U.S. Congress, who this month submitted the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act to President Bush. If approved, the Act will permit commercial passenger space flight (which could begin as soon as 2007) and offers an outline for FAA regulatory parameters over the next eight years. The FAA's primary purpose during this "experimentation" phase would be to protect public interest; they may only implement regulations to protect crew and passengers if there are serious accidents or close calls. Despite initial casual restrictions for unmanned flight experimentation, passengers would ultimately have to accept all responsibility and liability for space travel. The projected price just to get a seat on a rocket ship: an otherworldly $200,000. Space travel enthusiasts believe this is the next "big thing" in U.S. economic development and job creation.

Source: AVweb, December 12, 2004.

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Digtital Architecture: Cutting Costs while Improving Effeciency

November 2004 - Advances in technology, material, and other process improvements have improved the speed at which full-size homes can now be built. One of the nation's largest homebuilders, Pulte Homes, Inc. (www.pulte.com), is revolutionizing the industry with their line of Pulte Home Sciences (PHS) residential dwellings. PHS homes are generated largely from steel, using 35% less wood than traditional homes, and have a foundation they claim is twice as strong as conventional concrete. However, Pulte's greatest advancement may be their idea to manufacture all parts of the home inside a central factory, including everything from the foundation to the roof. Once the pieces are created, they are delivered to the construction site and assembled; not built as traditional homes are, and in a matter of only 3 to 7 days. A PHS home is typically manufactured and assembled, from the ground up, in as little as a week.

Source: The Washington Post, December 12, 2004.

In a related story, New York architecture firm, Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (SHoP - www.shoparc.com) is also changing the way firms design and build structures. Using 3-D modeling software, SHoP is about to complete construction on the first ever 100% digitally designed and fabricated building, a "camera obscura", on New York's Long Island. Every piece of wood, steel, and aluminum was custom made and laser-cut over a period of only a few days. Once the pieces arrived on location, workers began assembling the structure; total construction time is expected to be only about three weeks. In addition to quicker construction times, other benefits of digital-form architecture include significant reductions to labor costs, and virtually no material waste.

Source: Justin Scanlon, "Frank Gehry for the Rest of Us." Wired, November 2004.

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