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Research has shown that very few workers actually spend 100% of their time in the office doing their assigned tasks. Looking at the average US office worker, we can see that around 10% of their day is spent emailing friends, shopping online, and surfing the internet. This behaviour actually has a name, “cyberloafing”, and employers like to claim that it cost the US economy around $85 billion a year. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they!
On the face of it, this looks like a recipe for disaster. After all, no employer wants to be paying for wasted time. But psychologists beg to differ. They tend to look at this behaviour as the result of some other underlying course. They suggest that cyberloafing exists in order to help employees cope with the stresses of the 21st century work environment.
In 2002, the National University of Singapore, did a study that originally assumed, as a starting point, that cyberloafing was a problematic behaviour. A lot of research has gone into focusing on ways to stop employees from engaging in this “wasteful” behaviour. Over the years, many employers have been using all sorts of software checks to ensure the employees are working 100% of the time. These include such things as keystroke monitoring, internet monitoring, and computer user policies written into individual workers contracts. But today, the thinking is that this is a totally wrong-headed approach.
We should start off by recognising that workplace stress is a real thing. Every year, hundreds of thousands of workers take time, resign or take long breaks, simply to look after their mental health. In many cases their work situation proves untenable and unbearable. Studies have shown that cyberloafing has an impact on how employees are able to manage their stress levels. Yet other research has shown that many employees surf the web simply because they're bored or under unclear instructions. In other words, they're surfing the web in response to a failure in management.
Nevertheless, cyberloafing has been linked to some positive outcomes. One of these is that the use of social media at work has been linked to greater job satisfaction and a higher level of employee engagement.
The 6 million-dollar question is whether cyberloafing can really be effective in reducing employees levels of stress? To help answer this question, 258 university students, who worked around 20 hours a week completing online surveys, were recruited into a research project. The hypothesis being tested was that cyberloafing acts as a mini break during the workday. And so gives employees an opportunity to recalibrate, reset, and recover from the stressful day to day activities.
The students were asked to list how much time they spent on various cyberloafing behaviours. These included such things as checking on work email, shopping, and generally surfing the web. They were asked to rank these in running order from “never” to “constantly.” At the same time the students were asked to rank their job satisfaction. This included how often they experienced being threatened, bullied, or shouted at during the day, and whether this increased their desire to quit completely.
Not surprisingly, those students who reported work placement mistreatment have much lower levels of job satisfaction. All looking to quit their companies as soon as possible. One thing that stood out in this survey was that those who are mistreated, tend to spend more time surfing the web. And at the same time, those also reported a higher job satisfaction, than those who didn't have the possibility to cyberloaf during the day. So it was clear that cyberloafing can act as a relief valve. Allowing employees to decompress after their stressful experiences.
Of all the interviews, around 65% of them reported that they would spend at least some time cyberloafing at work. Though these people's use was quite moderate, often being limited to checking their own personal emails. Without actually assessing the impact of cyberloafing on a workers individual performance, the researchers concluded that cyberloafing can have a buffering effect, that may help workers to be more productive. In some ways, this fits with other research that shows that short breaks during the day are associated with a higher level of job performance. Take note that researchers are not saying that cyberloafing is always good. It's obvious that if done to an excess, then the individual’s work performance is going to suffer and decrease.
The general takeaway was that both managers and employers should cut their workers some slack when it comes to cyberloafing. Of course, this is a very different scenario than simply allowing employees to constantly use their personal social media platforms during working hours. But they only focus on the cyberloafing itself, and not the causes or symptoms. In this way, managers and bosses will find it hard to make the changes needed. Especially those that need to start at the top. In many work situations there is a “realpolitik” which dictates that the problems begin and end with the employees. Unfortunately this is a very short-sighted and blinkered approach. But at the same time, it relieves both the employers and their management of the duty of making changes from their end.
We suggest that allowing your workers to cyberloaf, whether it's online shopping or surfing the internet, should be considered normal behaviour. Remember that your workers are not robots. They are human beings. And everyone needs to take a break in order to come back refreshed and able to concentrate even more. In such a situation, the beneficiary is not just the mental health workers, but also the business itself, as greater productivity will increase overall earnings.
