Advice Library.

The other day I came across an article that said the average US worker spends approximately two hours each day taking care of personal matters, such phone calls, e-mail, personal shopping, and the like.

If these are eight-hour workdays, that's a substantial chunk of time, and an equally large cost to employers. In fact, the article stated that employers are shelling out $700,000,000,000 annually to pay for this "personal time."

I know a lot has already been written on this subject, but it remains a problem, so it's not out of line to suggest it deserves continued attention. After all, 25 percent of a workday is a significant amount of time. It first begs the question "why is so much personal business being done at work?"

Perhaps one part of the answer is "because people can get away with it." An Associated Press article last year reported that the town of Islip, New York saved nearly 14,000 gallons of gasoline over a three-month period after they installed GPS devices on their city vehicles. The purpose of the devices was to be able to track where the vehicles were throughout the day. Apparently, people were doing a lot of personal side trips, which were cut out when people knew they could be tracked. Based on typical mileage for city driving, that equates to about 70,000 miles and over $12,000 each month. Ouch!  That was a lot of gasoline, and again, a substantial cost to the employer.

Another part of the answer for why people take care of personal matters at work is "because it's reasonable." In yet another AP story, a civil servant (also in New York) was let go for spending too much time surfing the Internet at work. A judge ultimately ruled that the worker had to be reinstated, stating that the Internet is now as commonplace as telephones and newspapers.

The judge stated that, "city agencies permit workers to use a telephone for personal calls, so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance," and, "the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone."

"Back in the day" (which is a parallel phrase to "when I was a kid," that horrid expression that precedes a lecture), personal phone calls were totally forbidden at work, except in cases of emergency. Telephones were commonplace (I'm not THAT old), so it's not like people couldn't communicate. What's changed?

What’s changing are people's attitudes of what is considered normal. Today's technology enables communications and commerce to occur in ways that were unheard of even twenty years ago. A majority of baby boomers are keeping up, but "keeping up" is not a problem for Generation Y workers – especially those currently under the age of 25. To them, these technologies are commonplace and natural. And in their eyes, too much restriction on "quick and easy" personal communication is akin to depriving them of food and water.

Let's think about what that judge said. Yes, the Internet is commonplace these days. But what’s reasonable? How much time should we have allowed a person to read the newspaper at work 20 years ago?

Beyond basic news, the Internet invites personal time spent chatting and even online dating, so what's reasonable there? What used to be "just a few minutes" running personal errands has expanded into hours of reading blog posts, newspapers, and magazine articles, plus researching new gadgets, scouring e-Bay, scanning personals, and chatting with friends.

In many jobs, restricting this behavior 100 percent would be seen as a Gestapo tactic, which would lead many Gen Y workers to seek employment elsewhere. Still, an average of two hours a day – a quarter of an eight-hour workday - seems a bit excessive.

Yet if employers want to keep these highly talented people around, a blend of personal time and work time is practically essential. Again, the question becomes "how much is reasonable?"

Naturally, what is reasonable will vary from job to job, so no one rule can apply across the board. But in reality, I’m a strong supporter of Results Only Work Environments (ROWE), and advocate its use wherever possible. This is when the employer and the employees agree on what results are expected, and what the compensation will be for those results. Employees are then free to do whatever they like, whenever they like, so long as the results agreed upon are delivered before the agreed upon deadline.

However, ROWE requires solid communication and a tremendous trust factor in both directions. Implementing such a model is a huge shift in viewing how work gets done in a business. Some managers and/or leaders don’t want to let go of control, still others don’t want to assume the appropriate responsibilities, and some just don’t want to take the risk. But, quite frankly, the nature of work in some businesses simply preclude companies choosing ROWE as a workplace model.

But when it comes to work that can’t happen in a ROWE, especially hourly work, I think it’s wise and reasonable to be clear about what’s expected. For an example of people doing things different than I’m paying them to do, I’ll use the analogy of hiring a plumber to fix something at my house. It’s pretty straightforward: If a plumber is at my house for four hours and bills me for four hours, I expect him to have worked on my plumbing for four hours. If he spent three hours working on my plumbing and one hour on the phone coaching a co-workers through a job in a different location, I don't want to pay for four hours of his time.

It wouldn’t matter even if that one hour was not a continuous hour. If the plumber made four fifteen-minute phone calls during his four hours at my house (or even ten six-minute calls), I want my bill to reflect three hours of actual work, not four.

In the same way, if I have a full-time employee who spends one hour each day surfing the net but then can't finish his or her assignments, I've got a problem with that. Especially if the person wants overtime pay to stay later, or won't stay late at all to get the job done.

Because jobs vary greatly, much of this topic is circumstantial. Therefore, my advice is this: Employers, have conversations with your employees about this subject. In their hearts, most people know what is reasonable and what is not. By involving them in the decisions of what's reasonable and what the consequences ought to be for overstepping the agreed decisions, you're likely to get a lot more cooperation.

What's more, you can't just have this conversation once and say it's a done deal. People will waiver every day. Regular, ongoing dialog will keep the matter in the front of people's minds, and then they are more likely to be self-policing.

Yes, you might have to hold the line and discipline some people. But the bottom line is that people are being paid to work, not handle their personal affairs. And although times are changing, personal work, on work time, should be kept to an absolute minimum.

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