No business can afford to have time wasters at work.

That is especially true considering business growth and profitability is directly tied to how productive the employees are.

So what really makes employees unproductive at work? And, how can this problem be solved?

In this infographic, we explored the top three reasons and offered some solutions you can implement.

1. Chatting with co-workers

In a research done by trackvia.com, chatting with co-workers takes up most of the wasted time at work.

This is called the water cooler effect, a phenomenon where employees at a workplace gather around the “water cooler” to chat about non-work related stuff.

This kind of non-work related talk may still be necessary in the workplace. But, cutting down on this would dramatically reduce wasted time.

Set rules and systems in place so that employees will not spend so much time in the water cooler and do a lot of non-work related chat.

2. Non-work related Internet surfing

Almost two-thirds of Salary.com’s respondents in their survey said they visit non-work related websites every day during work hours.

3% of them said that they spend more than 10 hours a week on personal websites.

These include social networks, online games, emails, instant messaging, online shopping and even pornography!

A simple solution would be to track down the websites everyone is visiting on their work computer and make sure they don’t spend too much time on these unproductive sites.

A time tracking software (like Time Doctor) could help you do this.

3. Useless meetings

Most of the meetings that happen inside of companies are actually useless and unnecessary. But, still we spend so many hours sitting down on this top time waster.

According to EffectiveMeetings.com, professionals who attend meetings regularly admit to daydreaming, missing meetings on purpose, doing other work during meetings and even dozing off.

Don’t fall into the meeting trap!

Look at your meeting agenda and see if the topics can be discussed through email, phone or even a quick Skype chat. If that’s the case, then don’t bother wasting your time by discussing it for hours inside a meeting or conference room.

Check out the full infographic below. If your company is still wasting time on these activities, it may be time to do something about it.

If there are other time wasters that you encountered in the workplace, let us know in the comments too!