Workers Wasting Time Cost US Employers $134B In Lost Effort: Infographic

A day after many U.S. and Canadian office workers wiled away countless on-the-clock hours shopping online, business liability insurance company BOLT is putting out an infographic to show just how much time American employees waste while on the job.

The findings, according to BOLT: Employees waste enough time on “non-work tasks” to cost their employers some $134 billion in lost productivity.

Time spent browsing the Web, corresponding on social networks and personal email and keeping up with sports form a big part of that lost effort, according to BOLT, with employees costing businesses $1.1 billion a week in time spent tending their fantasy football teams, for example. But a lot of wasted time, according to employees surveyed, is dealt dealing with unnecessary tasks like attending useless meetings, fixing others' mistakes, and putting up with chatty co-workers. Forty-three percent of employees, according to BOLT, say they waste time having to appease warring sides in confrontations about office politics, for example.

Given that kind of perception from employees, it’s no surprise many admit to using the time between 9 to 5 to look for another job, with 46 percent of workers admitting to that faux pas. That also seems to explain the popularity of professional networking site LinkedIn, which beats out Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Amazon.com -- although not Facebook -- in terms of sites employees admit to visiting during work hours.