Years ago, people in the workplace had a much clearer picture of business ethics and having personal integrity within the workplace. Today, given a recent survey just released by PopCap Games, this traditional definition has been lost and probably forever.

Did you know that 10% of your white collar workers waste their work time playing video games anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour each day? For the average American worker being compensated at $30,000 who is playing video games on company time is costing the bottom line anywhere from $375 to $3750.

For years people complained about smoker's in the office wasting time and affecting other employees' productivity. Yet, many of these same complainers see nothing wrong with engaging in activities that are not within their job description. Being someone who was educated to have high work ethics, this behavior is frankly astounding not to mention arrogant and entirely disrespectful.

How can any company function when employees believe that they are entitled to playing a video game to take the edge off their day? Of course, I am sure that these employees including top level executives do not believe that they are costing the company anything. Given the culture of the times, the employees' beliefs that companies have endless bank accounts and what the heck it is only 15 minutes seem to take over good common sense.

Simply speaking, when employees play video games on company time unless of course they are video game programmers, they are demonstrating extremely poor work ethics and a total lack of personal and professional integrity. There are no excuses for not delivering an hour of work for an hour of pay.

With a shrinking workforce and an expanding economy, business owners will continually face this challenge of poor work ethics or what I called attitudes toward performance. Take the time to review your values statements and create the necessary policies to ensure that your employees play those video games on their own time.

Simply speaking, leaders are readers. If you enjoyed this article, you may find the Leadership Audit of interest at http://www.processspecialist.com/od.htm

Call me, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, The Chief People Officer for people and organizations or want to improve results at 219.759.5601. Visit at http://www.processspecialist.com to explore everything from how my solutions double results to articles and resources including the Simply Speaking series.

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