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Why You Can't Get Any Work Done
Workplace distractions cost U.S. business some $650 billion a year
Emily Keller / Business Week
July 02, 2008
Sly Kodrin, vice-president for operations at a hinge manufacturing company in Alliance, Ohio, likes to maintain a shop floor that balances passion with productivity, allowing his 75 employees to listen to music and socialize, as long as it does not interfere with their work.
But when a stamping press operator brought golf clubs to work one day and began swinging at rolled-up work gloves while he was in charge of an automatic stamp press, Kodrin’s line had been crossed.
“Most people, I tend to believe, thought it was funny at first,” Kodrin says about the incident, which rose above the ordinary distractions of equipment noise, weather, blackouts, and news of the day.
But the humor dissipated quickly, and Kodrin sat the employee down, asking him what was needed to reenergize him about his work at Marlboro Manufacturing. The two were then able to put the incident behind them.
Cracking Down on Goofing Off
In a work environment where digital and cellular transmissions pile another layer of distractions on top of traditional horseplay on the shop floor and water-cooler gossip at the office, some distracting employees have not been so lucky. In fact, more and more businesses would be better cracking down on such distractions. It is estimated that American businesses lose around $650 billion a year through workplace distractions, according to Jonathan Spira, chief analyst of Manhattan consulting firm Basex, who authored a report called “The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity.”
Bruce Lynskey, a former marketing director for technology company Wellfleet Communications , once fired a middle manager for spending an estimated 40% to 50% of his time wandering around the office disturbing other employees, surfing the Web, paying bills, and reading industry magazines.
“It’s nice to keep up with the industry, but I think you should do that on your own,” says Lynskey, who teaches a course on managing fast-growing businesses at Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, Tenn.
Experts say that goofing off at work is rare, but more routine distractions can also have a detrimental impact on productivity.
