How Smartphones Rob Bosses of Company Time

Survey finds most employees spend an hour a day playing on their phones
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 29, 2017 7:56 AM CDT
Employees Spend Hour a Day Playing on Their Smartphones
Most employees are on their phones not working 56 minutes a day.   (Getty Images / xavierarnau)

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.)

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