All employees should have some freedom to make limited necessary
personal calls. A quick check-in with the new babysitter or a call during office hours to make an appointment with a doctor is understandable. But some employees waste hours every week on personal calls. The impact on productivity is huge, and the behavior can be extremely demoralizing to hard-working employees.

Be prepared. The excuses for this productivity problem sound very good.

• “I am working the entire time I am on the phone, so I am not wasting time.”
• “I can’t just ignore checking on my children.”
• “They called me and I couldn’t get off the phone.”

How to Curb Chattiness
Vents are an excellent way to train employees on which topics are workrelated and which are not. Again, do not overestimate an employee’s ability to make this distinction. Some really have not been trained to know when they are wasting company time. Here are some guidelines that will help make vents go smoothly.

• Employees agree to save any vent-related conversations for the
weekly vent or to discuss these topics on their own time—not the
company’s.
• No topics or language that might be offensive to anyone in the company can be included.
• Talk about anyone inside or outside the company must be positive and constructive. Nothing can be communicated that would be uncomfortable if the person were online and reading it him- or herself.
• One person or topic cannot dominate the vent.
• State at the outset that if the vent becomes negative or fractious, it will be shut down.
• Management will be online for the vent and will recommend when a
topic is too politicized for the group to include. Save those for
employee lunches with best friends.

The biggest conversational time wasters on the job are topics that
get rehashed over and over again during the course of the week. Lumping together all those conversations about the new lime green paint in the cafeteria gets that over with effectively in one finite online discussion. Does this topic really need to be discussed over and over again? I think not.

Taken From: 201 Ways to Turn Any Employee Into a STAR Performer