Your office distractions are quite costly!

OfficeGenie.co.uk has conducted a research to see how much time people are wasting being distracted at the office, and it’s not good news. Those silly cat videos you watch on Facebook every day at work are costing the country billions of pounds. Yes, you read that correctly.

On average, British workers spend more than three quarters of an hour (more than 45 minutes every day) being distracted online. When you combine how much that costs, and how many workers there are in the UK, you come to a figure of £88 billion each year.

Yes, by watching silly cat videos on Facebook, you’re contributing to the loss of £88 billion in working hours yearly.

If you’re a younger worker (16 - 24), you’re usually the worst culprit -- those spend more than an hour (1 hour 2 minutes) surfing the web for personal use. Older workers (55 – 64) don’t find it that amusing -- they spend about 27 minutes a day.

When looking at remote workers compared to those in the office, the results are quite expected -- home workers are wasting an average of 1 hour 12 minutes each day, while those in the office waste approximately 34 minutes.

Looking at the biggest distractors, the results are also quite expected -- social media comes first, followed by e-commerce, followed by news.

Peter Ames, head of Strategy at OfficeGenie.co.uk, said: "People may think a quick diversion every now and then can’t hurt, but when you look at the nation as a whole serious amounts of time, and effectively money, are being wasted every year. However, introducing draconian measures to prevent this, such as checking employee browsing history, are only going to breed a culture of mistrust. This is something no employer wants. We’d advise bosses to communicate internet usage policies to all employees, and be flexible with working hours, allowing staff to make up for time lost if they need to use the web for personal tasks".

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