7 Annoying Office Habits

There was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle last October 31 titled, “Did you hear? The office gossip is disliked by most of the staff.” The article was written by Ilana DeBare to report on a survey by the staffing firm Randstad USA where they asked people to identify which of seven workplace behaviors they found most annoying.

Guess what won?

The big winner was office gossip, which bothers 60% of the people surveyed. Close behind came poor time-management skills, cited by 54 percent.

In third place but trying harder, was the issue of being a pig in the office. Messiness in common areas was mentioned by 45 percent.

And then closing up the list were the following:

42% - Strong odors from a co-worker’s overpowering perfume, cigarettes, or food.
41% - Loud noises from those around you from speaker phones, music and cell phones.
28% - Overuse of personal communication devices during meetings, such as cell phones and BlackBerries.
22% - Misuse of email, such as hitting “reply to all” and sending what should have been a private comment to an entire company.

This month is a good time as a leader to remind your people of your company standards and proper behaviors for optimum productivity in your office. Possibly sharing this list gives you a nice entrée into this type of discussion.