WASHINGTON, D--According to a groundbreaking new study by the Department
of Labor, working--the physical act of engaging in a productive
job-related activity--may greatly increase the amount of work
accomplished during the workday, especially when compared with the more
common practices of wasting time and not working.
"Our findings are astounding: By simply sitting down and doing work,
employees can dramatically increase their output of goods and services,"
said Deputy Undersecretary of Labor Charlotte Ponticelli, who authored
the report. "In fact, 'working' may revolutionize the way people work."
Perhaps even more shocking, the study reveals that not working
significantly decreases worker productivity, sometimes even resulting in
no work getting done at all. Similar findings were reported in the areas
of avoiding work, putting off work, complaining about work instead of
actually working, pretending to work, and fucking around.
"Fucking around is in fact detrimental to the work process," the study
reads in part.
To conduct the study, researchers split the staff of a Washington-based
insurance company into two groups and assigned each group a series of
tasks to be completed by the end of the day. The control group engaged
in normal workplace activities, such as standing around and talking,
staring vacantly at the computer screen, and surfing the Internet. The
other group was instructed to do work and complete its given tasks.
Incredibly, the group that did not do any work failed to get any work
done, while the group that did do work finished all the work.
The researchers believe that these lessons could possibly be applied to
fields outside the insurance industry.
"Based on the study, we can safely conclude that if an employee's job is
to process expense reports, doing a crossword puzzle will result in the
successful completion of that task zero times out of 100, while
processing expense reports will result in the successful completion of
that task 100 times out of 100," head researcher Richard Schoemberg said.
Jon Halper, a Baltimore-area small-business owner, claims that people
used to laugh whenever he told them that the key to worker productivity
was not checking friends' MySpace pages for hours at a time, but rather
working.
"After this study, I feel vindicated," said Halper, who believes working
is so important that for years he has required all his employees to work
throughout the day. "Hopefully, more companies will embrace the idea
that employees working on things that they are supposed to do is
practically essential."
A similar study conducted at Harvard University over a period of three
years attempted to determine conclusively whether working was more
productive than various different subsets of not working. The results
showed across the board that working is 100 percent more productive than
listening to music and checking e-mails, 100 percent more productive
than meandering around the office socializing with coworkers, 100
percent more productive than playing online Sudoku, 100 percent more
productive than watching YouTube videos of nostalgic childhood
television programming, 100 percent more productive than reading
celebrity-gossip blogs while chatting with friends on Instant Messenger,
100 percent more productive than napping, and 98.2 percent more
productive than not showing up to work.
Despite the staggering new findings, many American workers say that they
still do not feel comfortable working on the job.
"I love coming into work every day," Arlington, VA sales manager Bryce
Davidson said. "I get to have great conversations with [office
receptionist] Sandy, challenge myself with Yahoo! TextTwist, and still
have time to set my fantasy-football roster. Why would I want to ruin
work by working?"
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