Seventy-four percent of workers admitted to looking for jobs while they were on the job, according to a recent survey from Right Management — and that’s just the people who would admit it.
The good news for employers is that they probably shouldn’t worry about lowered productivity as a result of workers surfing job boards.
“While the survey didn’t probe whether this might lower productivity, I suspect checking out job boards is no more distracting or time consuming than personal phone calls or dabbles on Facebook, and employers learned long ago to live with those,” says Monika Morrow, Senior Vice President of Career Management at Right Management. “Anyway, constant presence on the Internet is now a fact of workplace life and evidence is that people are nevertheless working harder and more efficiently. So I don’t think employers should be concerned by this finding.”
Still, that’s probably not an argument you’d want to try to make to your boss. It’s best to avoid the conversation altogether, and observe the following precautions:
1. Whenever possible, do your job searching outside of work.
2. If you do have to search at work, try not to use company equipment. Assume that your employer is tracking your internet use, and confine searches to personal mobile devices — and keep your searching to a minimum.
3. Set up email alerts from various job searching sites, and review your email on your smartphone or PDA. You’ll save your time and your employer’s.
Tell Us What You Think
We want to hear from you! Do you look for jobs while you’re at work? Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter, using the hashtag #MakeItHappen.
(Photo Credit: usaghumphreys/Flickr)
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