Cyberloafing Is A New Term And Most Of Us Are Guilty Of It

Psychologists have coined the term cyberloafing to describe folks using work hours for personal time online. Has your office done anything to stop employees from cyberloafing? Do you think their moves are successful?

No matter how much we know that we should be concentrating on work during the workday, it is way too easy to get distracted when we are on the computer. More and more people spend their workday doing personal stuff online, so much so that psychologists have now given the practice a name – cyberloafing.

Cyberloafing, described as using time at work for personal interest such as online shopping, following the news, checking social media and cyber surfing, is one of the biggest things affecting employee productivity, according to a new report in the “The Journal of Psychosocial Research."

The study, out of the University of Texas at San Antonio, finds that about 14% of a worker's day is spent cyberloafing, with those who do it then taking about 23 minutes to get back to their work responsibilities. Overall looking at news coverage is one of the biggest things people do while cyberloafing, with online shopping also one of the major causes of decreased employee productivity.