Personal email and social media made up the majority of the wasted time, with sports sites, mobile gaming, and shopping placing a far distant third, fourth, and fifth place. A survey of professionals by staffing firm OfficeTeam found that office workers squander an average of 56 minutes a day, or nearly five hours a week, using their mobile devices for non-work activities in the office. Add to that another 42 minutes a day, on average, spent doing other personal tasks, and the average employee could be wasting more than eight hours per workweek on activities unrelated to their jobs. And if the office is mostly comprised of younger workers, the amount of lost time jumps dramatically. Employees ages 18 to 34 rack up 70 minutes on mobile devices and 48 minutes on personal tasks each work day—the most of all age groups—a total of just under 10 hours per week. “It’s understandable that employees may occasionally use their mobile devices or attend to personal tasks during business hours. But these activities can easily become big distractions,” said Brandi Britton, a district president for OfficeTeam. Phones weren’t the only ways employees waste time, though. More than half of the 600+ office employees surveyed said they used their phones to access websites blocked by company IT departments.
– Everyone knows smartphones can steal hours from a day, but employees are turning to their mobile devices while on the clock, too. A new survey by staffing firm OfficeTeam finds that office workers spend an average of 56 minutes a day on their cell phones while at work, and another 42 minutes a day doing other personal tasks. That's nearly five hours of personal phone time a week, and a total of more than eight hours of broader personal time, notes WTOP. Not only that, but most bosses underestimate the time waste on phones to be closer to 39 minutes a day—and workers younger than 35 are averaging a whopping 70 minutes of their day on their phones and 48 minutes on other personal matters. "It's understandable that employees may occasionally use their mobile devices or attend to personal tasks during business hours," OfficeTeam's' district president says. "But these activities can easily become big distractions." Fortune reports that most of the personal time on phones is spent on social media and non-work email; in distant third, fourth, and fifth places come sports sites, mobile gaming, and shopping. Beyond this, the survey found that 58% of office workers visit pages their company prohibits, but there's a breakdown between the sexes: 68% of men do this, compared to just 43% of women. (In the UK, some women get time off to cope with menstrual pain.)