In 2014, CareerBuilder surveyed more than 2,000 employers and managers, and more than 3,000 full-time workers, in the US about habits that hurt productivity in the workplace. Both workers and employees pointed to use of personal devices as the biggest productivity killer. About 24pc of workers said that they spent at least an hour a day making personal calls or texting at work, and about 21pc said that they spent at least an hour on the internet for non-work-related reasons. When researchers asked employers if they had done anything to address these productivity stoppers at work, 73pc said that they had instituted policies like monitoring email usage and banning certain websites.

(Harvard Business Review)

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, June 27th, 2016