Money For Nothing

Can you imagine going to work and getting paid to do nothing all day? It happens to more people, more often, than you'd think. Wasteful? Sure. A dream job? Hardly. Given the chance, most serious slackers say they'd be happier working more, not less

The day started like every other day for Ben Warren. The 31- year- old software coder arrived at his office in a bleak industrial park in Burnaby, B. C., after an hour- long commute and made a bowl of oatmeal in the company kitchen. Then, he wandered over to his desk and set about doing what he'd been doing every day for several months: absolutely nothing. Well, not exactly " nothing," but he certainly wasn't working. Instead, he spent the morning writing lengthy e- mails to friends, typing inside his company's coding software so that he'd look busy. After a short run at lunch, he focussed on actual work for about half an hour, but dropped that to write articles for a friend's blog on dating. Eventually, he just closed his eyes and zoned out, listening to an album by one of his favourite bands. To camouflage his inactivity, he rested his hands on his computer keyboard. What happened next was all too predictable. "I opened my eyes and I saw five rows of the letter 'e' on my screen," Warren says. "I'd been sleeping."

The workplaces of Canada may not be rife with so-called "idle workers," but they are an undeniable office presence, wasting money, wasting space and frustrating colleagues. Likewise, no one really knows how many are out there at any given time. But their impact is hard to miss. Stories occasionally surface, for example, revealing their financial impact. Take the 115 press operators at Quebecor's Le Journal de Montreal who walked off the job last June over proposed jobs cuts that would have saved the company $6 million annually. What were they protecting? Positions with an average salary of $115,000 a year for what often amounted to a 20-hour work week. A few months later, federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser accused a former head of the Office of the Correctional Investigator of being a champion slacker. According to Fraser, he accepted more than $325,000 in undeserved salary and benefits during the last six years of his career, having taken lengthy absences from his office. The executive in question called the charges "inflammatory" and "unfair," and an investigation is in progress.

In the bigger picture, however, the most serious issues surrounding idle staffers aren't about money. More significant is the impact they have on the workplace and what their presence says about just how dysfunctional the workplace can be. Because, as everyone knows, their existence -- even the mere suspicion that one of your colleagues is getting something for nothing -- can sow distrust, even jealousy. "It has a big impact," says Monika Morrow, vice- president of the human resources consulting firm Right Management. "Others have to pick up the slack, and that damages relationships. Management needs to recognize what's happening and nip problems in the bud. This kind of behaviour can spread like wildfire."

Ben Warren wasn't always such an unproductive worker. He loved his job during his first two years with the company. A devoted employee, he would happily pull all-nighters before key shipping dates to make sure his company's products got out on time and in top form. Then the owners of his firm sold out, and new ones came in with their own managers. Suddenly, things began to change, and not for the better. Warren's new bosses, for example, would consult with engineers on various projects and then ignore their advice. Or they would set policies that made staff feel they weren't respected. "They did ridiculous Dilbertesque things like ban the use of headphones in the office, which they then repealed after an uprising by the computer monkeys," Warren recalls. "I lost all respect for management. I lost my motivation. The worst feeling was at the end of the day. I'd be waiting for the bus thinking, 'Why was I even here?' "

No less soul-crushing was the experience of Barb Choit, a 29-year-old Canadian who used to work for a commercial art gallery in New York City. At the time, the gallery was closed for renovations. Since her main job was organizing shows, she had little to do. Nevertheless, her boss insisted Choit and her colleagues show up for work every day, confining them to a temporary office in the gallery's basement for six months.

Of course, there wasn't much to do down there. Make-work projects like archiving helped pass an hour or two every day, but otherwise Choit and her co- workers were on their own. One constantly shopped online for shoes. Another simply surfed the Web. Choit made collages of rock stars in Photoshop, using photos downloaded from the Internet. Or she looked for other jobs, or just stared at the computer screen with nothing to do. "I was bored out of my mind," Choit says. "I felt really, really depressed. I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job, because it's impossible to do a good job when you're doing nothing."

It may be easy to blame idle workers for their situation, but the fact they exist is not always a matter of their own laziness. True, negative attitudes can compound a situation, but their lack of work can also be a symptom of larger problems in an organization. People can become demoralized, for example, when managers do not communicate a company's objectives well or fail to include staff in decision-making. And an out-oftouch manager -- say, one who keeps their staff in the basement all day -- can actually create situations where employees, even keen ones, actually have nothing to do.

Corporate takeovers and mergers, which have become increasingly common in Canada, can be another significant trigger, says Dan Ondrack, professor of organizational management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business. "If you're working at a target company, your job may disappear," Ondrack says. "The takeover company always tries to bring in its own people and systems. A person working in those circumstances might think, 'Why bust my ass?' "

A major restructuring can have a similar effect. Companies trying to make a turnaround, such as Loblaw Cos. Ltd. or Nortel Networks Corp., for example, are under tremendous pressure to fire staff and reduce payrolls. "People realize that their individual efforts may not make much difference any more," Ondrack says. "Therefore, they spend their time polishing their resumes and searching for new jobs."

Sometimes, office politics are to blame. Anita McVeigh (not her real name), for example, used to work as a publicity assistant at a Vancouver music management company and says her main tasks of photocopying, filing and assembling press kits occupied 40 minutes out of a 20-hour week. The rest of the time, she'd watch The Rosie O'Donnell Show and Friends, which her boss asked her to record on a VCR, or e-mail friends. As McVeigh tells the story, her boss knew she was underworked and even apologized for it. But the situation persisted, McVeigh says, thanks to a continuing battle between her boss and the head of the company. "He wouldn't give her a raise. He wouldn't make her a partner. I think my boss liked that I was doing nothing. I was like her revenge."

Of course, management can't -- and shouldn't -- take all the blame for idleness. In some cases it can result from overly strict union contracts that don't give workers any flexibility. Gareth Scales held such a job when he worked the night shift at a printing company in Richmond, B.C. There, he was paid to sort bills and cheques, and put them in envelopes. He was busy on about three- quarters of his shifts. But on the other nights, he'd arrive at his 11 p.m. starting time only to be told that no bills were being printed and that he'd have to wait five or six hours. "We even had to take union breaks," he says. "If we were sitting around doing nothing, we had to go to the coffee room for 15 minutes and do nothing there. ... I couldn't even sweep a floor. That was someone else's job."

But in the end, playing the blame game doesn't do anything to solve the problems created by idle workers. The more important issue is whether anything ever gets done to resolve them. In most of the examples cited here, the workers weren't fired -- only McVeigh was eventually let go, but not until her boss got the axe -- and they were miserable. Managers or co-workers never intervened or took steps to make their roles more productive or satisfying. Most only escaped their tedious schedules when they left voluntarily to take other jobs.

Warren, for instance, was overjoyed to find a fresh start after a year of killing time in his cubicle. "The day after I was offered a new job, I went in and quit. It was a wonderful day," he says. "I wrote management a five-page report on why I was leaving, talking about the problems at the company. They didn't disagree with one point, but it was also clear they also weren't going to take action to resolve any of them. It just confirmed to me that leaving was the right thing to do."

Now Warren has returned to the world of the productive. He loves his current job, which is in a small office with just four people. He has more responsibility, and if he doesn't like the way something is set up, his boss will often act on his feedback and make changes. "It's similar hours, but before, I came home feeling exhausted from doing nothing all day. Now, I feel revitalized from being busy."

Likewise, Choit says making her exit was a relief. "I ended up leaving as soon as I found another job. I gave my two-weeks' notice and I was out of there."

And can you blame her? You may get money for nothing as an idle worker, but you still pay a price. Remember that the next time you spot a colleague heading out the door after a long day of doing nothing. Don't be angry. Get past those feelings and then be thankful it's not you who is the office slacker.

RX FOR IDLE WORKERS: A MANAGER'S GUIDE

EXPERT PRESCRIPTIONS FOR ANY SLACKERS ON YOUR STAFF

NOT ENOUGH WORK If managers realize there's not enough work for an employee, they should take steps to retrain the worker or encourage them to apply for other jobs within the company. If there are unavoidable and temporary work stoppages, managers should use that time to schedule training to upgrade the skills of their employees.

DEALING WITH UPHEAVAL Employees can lose their motivation during periods of major change, such as mergers or corporate restructuring, due to fears over job security. To avoid idleness, Right Management vice-president Monika Morrow says supervisors need to communicate with staff members and make them feel part of the process. "They'll be more likely to be committed to helping the organization move forward," she says.

POOR PRODUCTIVITY Managers should sit down with weak staff members and create a written plan with a timeline that lays out a strategy for improvement. "If a non-productive situation does arise, clear goals provide a framework for discussion on how to move forward," says Josh Blair, senior vice-president of human resources at Telus.