How do you stop employees from wasting time at work?

Instead, start by rewarding productivity. It doesn't have to be much, but recognizing employees for being productive with an incentive that they actually want can go a long way toward minimizing wasted time.

Setting clear goals and deadlines can also help. If your employees don't know what they need to be doing or feel that they have all the time in the world to meet their next deadline that's a month away, they're going to be bored and more likely to waste time.

Instead, set monthly, weekly, and even daily goals for them to hit so that they know what they need to be working on and feel that they have enough to do. Project management software is a great way to do this since you can often break larger projects up into tasks with individual due dates.

Finally, you may be able to reduce time-wasting by providing spaces for your employees to work distraction-free. This might be allowing them to work from home or in another out-of-office environment, or it may be designating a workspace that will have no phones, emails, or casual passers-by to interrupt.

This can be highly effective because it not only cuts down on distractions but it also, by extension, cuts down the amount of time it takes to recover from those distractions. It can take about 20 minutes to refocus on something after getting distracted from it, which adds up quickly the more interruptions there are.

Having a place to work undisturbed makes it easier for workers to stay in their workflow instead of being derailed for 30 minutes every time someone walks by their desk.