Public Servants on Trade Me

The Dominion Post has revealed that public servants spend 35,000 hours a year on Trade Me. My only surprise is that it is so low. I bet most work places would have a far higher rate, including Fairfax!

The “worst offender” is Justice Department where 3,015 employees spent 1,386 hours on Trade Me in August. So that is an average of half an hour per employee per month. If we assume only half the staff use Trade Me (and around 50% of NZers do use it) that is one hour per month or three minutes per work day. And last time I checked most staff get 1.5 hours a day of breaks.

The civil service has 40,000 staff in total, so 35,000 hours a year is an hour per staff member. That is around one minute a week per civil servant!!