A recent survey by Salary.com shows employee productivity may not be all that employers would like. According to the survey, "the average worker in the US admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per eight hour workday". This figure does not include lunch breaks or other scheduled break-time.

In Wisconsin, for every eight hours work an employer pays for, the employee is likely to deliver less than six. Respondents admit to wasting 2.8 hours on activities such as:

" Surfing the Internet for personal use

" Socializing with co-workers

" Conducting personal business

Take out employer sanctioned time off such as lunch breaks, vacation time and sick leave and the productivity picture looks even worse.

"Never has the argument for outsourcing been stronger" says Yvonne McCoy owner of Swift Office Services LLC, a Virtual Assistant firm based in Eagle, Wisconsin. Virtual Assistants (VAs) are fast becoming the small business owner's preferred choice for administrative and marketing support. VAs can substantially reduce the costs traditionally associated with hiring talent; they bill only for time on task and work remotely from their own fully equipped office. "This makes administrative support more affordable for the business owner who no longer needs to furnish his assistant with a desk, computer, telephone and all the other paraphernalia that goes with a direct hire."

"Nor does he need to worry how to keep the assistant fully occupied during slack periods" says McCoy. According to the survey, the number one time-wasting excuse is "Don't have enough work to do," reason enough for many to consider outsourcing over hiring. Since a whopping 33.2% of respondents cited this as their biggest reason for wasting time, small business owners need to seriously consider whether they can keep a new hire gainfully employed before committing to that kind of expenditure.

Swift Office Services LLC is one of a growing number of virtual assistant practices, operated by seasoned administrators who left the corporate world to become entrepreneurs. As McCoy states, "with innovations in communications and technology, many administrative and marketing functions can be undertaken from just about any location, and the resulting work easily transmitted by email, internet, fax or more traditional methods."

Just for the record, Wisconsin is not the biggest time wasting state. It ranks number four behind Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky.