Are you a cyberloafer?

New UTSA study details how to stop wasting time, money at work

SAN ANTONIO – The term “cyberloafing” may sound funny to many workers, but it’s no joke as it’s costing employers valuable time and money.  

Dr. Matthew McCarter, Associate Professor of Management at UTSA, was part of a new study that examines cyberloafing, which is described as employees who surf the Internet, write e-mail or other Internet-related activities at work that are not related to their job.  

McCarter said cyberloafing causes a significant loss of workplace activity and is a problem many organizations and managers face.

The increased use of mobile devices over the past decade have only added to the time workers spend away from their daily tasks, McCarter added.  

McCarter’s study cited research from the U.K. where a firm reportedly lost $470 million in productivity from workers cyberloafing for 15 to 30 minutes at least once a week.

Separate research showed British workers were interrupted once every 10 minutes by Facebook and Twitter, and took more than 20 minutes to refocus their attention back to their work. 

That time lapse reportedly cost their companies about $4,500 per worker every year. 

McCarter said he is not against leisure surfing and it can help people relieve stress and regroup their thoughts, but the study was done to determine the best way to decrease cyberloafing at work.

“It’s not wrong to get online for those jobs that involve creativity and those connections to social media,” said McCarter.

“What did become an issue was, it’s not only a question of them losing time when they get online, it’s the amount of time, up to three times longer that they spend to get back into focus. Companies are just not losing productivity on time they are spending online, but they are losing it when they get back into the groove,” McCarter said. 

McCarter teamed with Brice Corgnet at Chapman University and Roberto Hernán-Gonzalez at Nottingham University and the group compared two different types of decision-making processes when it came to spending time online or on social media.

“There’s really two things a manager can do,” McCarter said. “Use an autocratic decision making approach which is where you unilaterally make a decision to impose a policy on the use of the internet or you can use a more group based or democratic leadership process. This is where you give employees a voice.” 

The study placed two groups in a simulated data-entry organization.

One group was given a vote on Internet usage and the other was not.

Naturally cyberloafing was stopped in the group not given the option to access the Internet, but it did not increase their overall productivity.

McCarter said the group given a vote decided to cut off the Internet and their productivity increased by nearly 40 percent.

“When you gave them the ability to voice their opinions, even the cyberloafers that voted to keep Internet on, increased their work productivity.”

McCarter said employee empowerment was also a key part of their findings.

“If you give employees voice over something in the process, they become more satisfied in the outcome regardless of what it is,” McCarter said.

“In the end, managers can have their cake and eat it to. They can turn off the internet, but if you get the workers to buy into it, have them in a way decide, you don’t lose the productivity.”


About the Authors:

RJ Marquez is the traffic anchor/reporter for KSAT’s Good Morning San Antonio. He also fills in as a news anchor and has covered stories from breaking news and Fiesta to Spurs championships and high school sports. RJ started at KSAT in 2010. He is proud to serve our viewers and be a part of the culture and community that makes San Antonio great.