January 2007. Most Employees 'lose' Up To Two Hours Working Every Day.

An article in January's edition of Glamour Magazine revealed that most employees lose up to 2 hours work time every day.

"Most of us 'steal' at least 10% of our day to chat, email friends and run errands. Over a year it can add up to weeks of wasted time"

The article broke the time wasting into 4 sections.

The Gossip Break - Annual Work Waste 12 days

     "Catching up on last night's TV or a Colleague's hot date. (An average 10 minutes in the morning and 10 throughout the rest of the day)".

The Techno Time Waste - Annual Work Waste 19 days

     "Personal phone calls, internet shopping and texting lead to serious waste, approximately 30 minutes every day".

The Tea Break - Annual Work Waste 37 days

     "This is a very popular trick with people who are unhappy in their jobs and it can end up being a huge drain on time. Most people caught in this trap easily throw away an entire hour every day, thats 22 hours a month".

The Late Show - Annual Work Waste 9 days

     "Those few minutes late in the morning, going for lunch early and getting back late all add up".

"This graph charts the efficiency of one worker's day in the office. The pink line shows them working at a 100% efficiency rate, while the coloured lines show dips due to the different time wasting techniques.

If, like most people, your employees do all of these things on a daily basis, then in a single year they are wasting approximately 541 hours - that's 77 days, or a shocking 15 weeks".

January 2007. Small Business Owners Weighed Down By Workload.

Small business owners are being encouraged to spread their workload more effectively to offset increasing levels of stress being experienced in the workplace.

According to research carried out by insurance provider Zurich, almost half of small business owners toil for six or seven hours each week, with almost a fifth working over 12 hours each day.

Zurich's research also shows that two fifths of small business owners said they were experiencing stress as a result of not having days off, with over four fifths saying they had taken no days off in the previous 12 months.

It would appear that one of the main reasons why small business owners are not able to free up time for a break is due to taking on a series of roles in their firm.

Over two thirds of the 1,028 respondents who participated in the poll said they were fulfilling a number of roles in their firm, including sales, operations, supply chain management and HR.

Despite this many small business owners are not achieving pecuniary returns, with less than two fifths taking home a salary in excess of £20,000.

David Nichols, commercial head of package business at Zurich, said: "UK small businesses form the backbone of our economy and they're clearly working very long hours.

"We rely on them to be there supplying us what we want, when we want it, but working such long hours without a break will have a detrimental effect," he added.

(http://www.bcentral.co.uk/sbnews/default.aspx?nid=18019944)