The cost of workplace distractions to labor productivity; personal use of social media and hand-held devices during working hours

Abstract

Some workers may already have their own time management and self management systems that favor spending more of their paid hours working for the organization that has engaged them. However, some workers are more prone to and susceptible to social media distractions during the working hours and may not contribute as much as they could. The loss of productive hours to distractions away from the work they are being paid for, does impact on the quality of output, and the workers performance which constitutes to losses of productive work hours. This paper reviews literature on the implications of non work-related social media and personal handheld device use during paid working hours in the workplace. The focus is on economies that are benefiting from the increase in accessibility to cheaper technology without effective corresponding labor market monitoring tools.