where do i find information about people who abuse there break time at
work and what it cost. the ethics of this issue, most people belive
taking an extra 5 minutes does not cost the company anthing.

Hi,

You aren't the first employer to notice that excessive payroll costs
due to long breaks and that sort of thing can be costly.  Here are
some articles that support your position:

Robert Half International study on time theft
"Deliberate and continual time theft poses a serious threat to
individual companies and to the nation's economic well-being."
http://www.biolynx.com/Robert_Half_Study.pdf

TimeClox
"According to the American Payroll Association, the average weekly
'theft' of time (long lunches and breaks, tardiness, early departures,
etc.) is 4 hours and 5 minutes per employee."  [Note: Unfortunately I
was unable to find the original source of the APA statement.]
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:cMkCjHzmAWEC:www.adventfla.com/TimeClox%2520Info.htm+%22time+theft%22+breaks&hl=es&ie=UTF-8

Time+Plus
"The average weekly 'theft' (long lunches, breaks, tardiness, early
departures,  intentional missing punches, etc..) is four (4) hours and
five (5) minutes according to studies conducted by the Robert Half
Agencies."
http://www.timeplus-id.com/savings.html

Partners in Time
"Employee time theft is one of the most common yet often unreported
components of many organization's labor costs. Although it is
difficult to recover time lost to personal business conducted at work,
time from early arrivals, late departures, and long breaks and meals
can easily be controlled using our system. Based on 255 working days
per year, the chart below illustrates the savings possible for
organizations of various size with a recovery of only 5 minutes of
this time per workday per employee."
http://www.legiant.com/justify.htm

Dollars & Sense
"Time theft or lost time per week accounts for the average worker
being overpaid by as much as two hours each week when you factor in
long lunches, tardiness, leaving early and extended breaks."
http://www.timenterprises.com/why/dollars.php

Count Me In
"Employee time theft costs as a result of buddy punching, early or
late arrivals, and long breaks or meals are estimated to be $98
billion in the U.S. alone."
http://www.hallogram.com/countmein/

Cost of Dishonesty in the Workplace
"In most cases, it is simple dishonesty, using company time for
personal use, taking longer breaks, or just not working. This is
justified by 'everyone else does it,' or 'the company owes me.' These
justifications still don't make it honest. The bottom line in today's
corporate world is that dishonesty can, and usually does, cost the
company money."
http://academic.emporia.edu/smithwil/s98mg476/EJA476u8/brooks.htm

Letting God Meet Our Needs (a sermon on thievery)
"No, we may not be thieving felons, but few, if any of us, have
escaped the subtle thefts of life."
http://www.christchurch-ucc.org/sermons/s022000.htm

Cost Justification
http://www.legiant.com/Files/Cost%20Justification.pdf

NeoMatrix (company sells devices for monitoring employee theft and
more)
http://www.neomatrix.com.au/benefits0.html

Finally, a couple pages that take a nontraditional approach to the
subject:

Union of Time Thieves Local #00
http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue30/timethieves_local00.htm

Sabotage: The Ultimate Video Game
http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue05/05sabotage.htm

I hope you find this information useful.

Best wishes,

mvguy

Google search term: "time theft" breaks
://www.google.com/search?q=%22time+theft%22+breaks

thanks great job i will need more help

Think about it this way. Say you pay your employees $10 an hour. Every
hour an employee is not doing something is an hour you have to pay
someone else to do it. If you have 100 employees each wasting 5
minutes a day, that's 8.33 hours a day wasted, or $83.33 worth of
labor. That's $416.67 a week, $21,666.67 a year, minus holidays. In
short, it's like you're carrying one extra employee.

People more familiar with economics can point out where I am wrong.
That's why this is just a comment.

I agree i would like to find articals to bak this up

Dear bd2309,

Thank you for your question, I appreciate that extra break time may be
irksome... However, another approach is to think of the management of
employees (like parenting) as a complex negotiation often involving
give and take:

A manager may insist on strict times to return from break, but is this
balanced by, for example, strict start times. Do the employees
sometimes start their break later to assist the workplace? Are they
conscientious workers otherwise? Do they ever stay after the official
finishing time to complete a task?

A search on motivation OR motivating employees yields a huge body of
work on this subject that may be useful in a situation such as the one
you have described.

Apologies if the above comment is not appropriate, I appreciate it is
not an answer to your question, but would come under the umbrella of
ethics.

Regards,

I would like to add one more point. Depending on the type of business
and the particular employees, extended breaks may serve a useful
business purpose.  If they are socializing but not excessively so,
they may be working out personal relationships which are important
when it comes to cooperating on their actual tasks.

That may apply even if we’re talking about the loading dock crew (I
bossed one once for Wang Labs. so this isn’t just a guess.) This is
especially true when they work in a noisy environment or have little
close contact doing their jobs but their work requires some
coordination.

In my experience professionals too seldom just take breaks, they talk
about things which are usually work-related.

In other words, this could be abuse, and it would be unethical if it
were, but if management is any good and they are not interfering with
the situation, they may feel that they are getting a return.

A good site to explore ethical questions related to business is the
Web site for The Institute for Global Ethics:
http://www.globalethics.org/

Interesting question.