Nope, you're not wrong, Steve. You're right on target. Which is why I resist participating in any kind of survey - you never know how the numbers will be manipulated.

But wait! The good news is I think there is a bad headline somewhere in your story.

How about:

We get you surfin' so you're not workin'?

May the perpetrators of this "survey" rot in hell not only because they're giving shortsighted managers more ammunition to restrict Internet access, but also because they're giving surveys a bad name.

As you point out in your inimitable way, Steve, AOL and salary.com use questionable methods to gather information and then try to peddle the results as newsworthy stuff -- and based on the coverage of this story that I've seen, they succeeded in doing so.

But this kind of crap is why people don't trust surveys and part of the reason it's hard to convince business leaders that a properly administered survey yields information that could, in fact, save them money in the long run. I'm thinking here of finding out what employees want and need to know, how they prefer to get that information, and what they do with it once they get it. A whole lot of waste can be eliminated by building communication programs around this kind of research.

Maybe even enough to make up for all that money the company's wasting on Internet-surfing employees.

Honest to God, everything that Craid and Robert said is exactly what I was thinking . . .I'm just not smart enough to say it like they did. It's MUCH easier to make throw-up jokes.

But you guys are dead-on.

Steve

But wait, there's a bright side --

Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com, said some time-wasting activities -- such as personal use of the Internet -- can be positive, resulting in new business ideas or a happier work environment.

"There is such a thing as creative waste," said Coleman. "Not all wasted time is bad."

Good thing, too, since here I am.

Unless the study separates out Internet activities such as reading this blog (which for me IS part of my job), this is the same kind of thinking that gives us studies claiming that we waste 60% of our time on e-mail and meetings (when of course they are an important part of our job, not an obstacle to doing it).

DATE: 07/14/2005 78:61:3A PM
WHERE?????

DATE: 07/14/2005 81:72:1A PM
I agree!!

A more honest, realistic measurement comes from studying hit counts of online stories. Essentially, people "vote" with their time. So, they only click something that they think offers value with their time. This way, you're not asking them questions about what they WILL read, but analyzing what they ALREADY read.

By studying the hit counts of my online new stories, I was able to tailor headlings and content more to what they WANTED to read, and I increased my readership by 62%.

Has anyone else done this??? thanks

DATE: 07/15/2005 01:10:0P PM
I disagree with Coleman's semantics. Look up the definition of "waste" and you won't find one application that lends itself to the other terms he uses with it. And I think it underscores his, and the survey framer's, core beliefs about the issue.

What would really be interesting would be to find out what he believes is wasted time that is "bad"....filling out salary surveys? Separating AOL junk, er, direct mail pieces from regular mail? Sitting through company "motivational meetings?"

DATE: 07/15/2005 63:70:1A PM
Not only is the survey methodology questionable, as Robert points out, but the whole premise is flawed. It assumes a piecemeal viewpoint of the value delivered by American workers. This would only make sense if the study was only looking at work that was solely driven by strict, linear exchance of hours and output, i.e. assembly line work.

As Shel Holtz has argued, and I wholeheartedly agree, in in era in which most workers engage in "knowledge work" the more appropriate metric to evaluate is productivity and accomplishment of results against plan, not number of hours invested. Even if the study results are correct, which I sincerely doubt, what was left out of the equation was whether or not these workers actually accomplished their goals and objectives.

Nor was it determined how many hours workers devote to their company's behalf outside normal work hours, i.e., working from home in the evenings/weekends, coming in in the evening, working through lunch to make up time, etc.

Again, the focus on hours/time alone is a red herring. Smart companies and their leaders will focus instead on what results are actually being delivered against a workers compensation, not how many hours, and when, the work is actually produced (unless meeting deadlines is part of the deliverable).

A million years ago when I was in college my PR professor told us that no one was going to care if it took us one hour, or 100 hours, to develop a successful communications program, only that it achieved what it was supposed to achieve. Unfortunately, idiotic surveys and flawed premise's like this do nothing more that perpetuate the notion that activities and effort are the most important things, not outcomes.