What’s the biggest office waste of time? This survey.

It started with the headline every Gen Y or Net Generation office worker wanted to read – “Why your employer shouldn’t ban Facebook”.
That really set the tone. Basically ‘Why your boss is an out-of-touch old meanie who doesn’t understand how important it is to be in touch with your friends 24/7, even in the time they’re paying you for.’
So what was the good news? Well, an internet company had done a survey of 300 office workers to find out what they felt wasted their time most. And the good news was that it wasn’t social media. Hallelujah!
The real culprit, it turned out, was water cooler chats with colleagues. And meetings.
Then the next bit of good news — social media actually increase your productivity by give you some downtime at work. Wow! Amazeballs! Get this to the fuddy duddy old boss now!
It would be pretty amazing if it were true. But it most likely isn’t.
How do I know this? Because a cursory look at the methodology of this “survey” shows that it’s the biggest waste of time. Why?

1.     This is all self-reported data — no independent observation or data from qualified survey workers. So it’s all opinion and very little, if any, fact.

2.     That water cooler time that the kids clearly hate so much has been shown by multiple rigorous surveys over decades to be a useful way for ideas to cross-fertilise between co-workers and departments in organisations. So much so that some companies have designed their office spaces to encourage such meetings in order to promote innovation. It’s also a useful social lubricant, helping build teams, which in turn enhances productivity.

The biggest lesson here? As all good journalists have been told for a number of years, treat all survey results with scepticism and hold back on reporting their findings until you’ve checked out the methodology and the interpretation of the data.
P.S. Am I arguing for a Facebook ban? No - some break time on Facebook should be allowed, but allowing it subsume the normal, human face-to-face relationships in offices is unhealthy for the workplace and the people in it.

Ethical — you heard it here first.

http://t.co/ScZfRjm
I was very pleased to see that the above survey confirms what I wrote all of five years ago.
I agree absolutely with all of Jane Asscher’s comments.
One worry though — although it’s always good to be good and do good, I wonder how much this simply reveals people’s rhetoric rather than what actually drives their buying behaviour.
Have Apple, Gap and Primark been seriously hit by past concerns about the ethics of their sourcing practices, or the practices of their manufacturers? News International may be hit short-term (James Harding told Steve Hewlett The Times has had some collateral damage from the NoTW phone-hacking coverage) but I wonder if the “fade factor” will apply here and with other ethical PR disasters. Look at Charles and Camilla. In 1997 there’s no way they could be married. A few years later…
Also, when recession comes, how ethically-driven are our purchases? That could depend on how secure we are on a Maslow basis — if your basic needs are secure, you’ll continue to let ethics lead actions. If you’re struggling financially, maybe you will buy from the cheaper store you don’t really approve of. Or maybe it’s just how strongly-held your beliefs are.
Whatever, it’s good for marketers to know that being ethically tip-top is something worth spending resources shouting about.