Unproductive Employees Costing German Companies
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2124422,00.html

A new study indicated that lack of productivity in German companies is costing billions each year. While some amount of chatting can be good for business, the endless cigarette breaks and useless meetings add up.

A recent study may have shattered the long-standing stereotype of Germany being a country of hard-workers. One-third of the labor time spent in German companies is unproductive, according to a report by Proudfoot Consulting.

The lost time, consumed by cigarette breaks, chatting and useless meetings, added up to a national loss of 219 billion euros ($282 billion) in 2004 -- nearly 10 percent of the gross domestic product.

"The concept of economizing has got a bad rap in Germany," said Friedrich Kerker, a professor from the Institute for Applied Innovation Research at the Ruhr University in Bochum.

In Germany, a country poor in natural resources, the economy runs on information and ideas, which makes the employee, and interpersonal communication between employees, even more important.

The communicative coffee break, then, may contribute more to productivity when practiced in moderation than if it were to be eliminated altogether.