These Productivity Killers Make the Workplace a Drag

If you’re finding that not a lot of work is getting done at your workplace, perhaps the following employee behaviors are the culprits.

Online jobs firm CareerBuilder said it conducted a poll, and identified the top ten “productivity killers” that both employers and employees have observed at their workplaces.

According to the firm, the poll took in a representative sample of 2,138 hiring managers and human resource professionals. Also polled were 3,022 full-time, private sector workers.

What were the biggest time-wasters? In descending order, they include cell phone/texting, gossip, the Internet, social media, snack/smoke breaks, noisy co-workers, meetings, mail, co-workers dropping by and co-workers putting calls on speaker phone.

Most of these involve employees treating work as an extension of their social lives, while others simply have to do with poor work habits.

For instance, we’ve probably all worked in an “over meeting-ed” workplace, where every little decision has to be made by committee.

But, for the most part, these productivity killers could be drastically reduced if only people learned to separate the work and the social. After all, the more you get done at work, the more free time you’ll have for your social life. Unless, of course, you have a boss who needs to have five meetings per day.