What it means
The phrase began as slang for a fake: a brick that looked like gold on the outside but was worthless inside. It was later used in military and factory settings for a person who appears to be working but is not.
Today it applies to office workers, remote staff and contractors alike. Common signs include long breaks, personal tasks done on company time, busywork that has no clear output, and stretching small jobs to fill the hours.
The behaviour is different from legitimate downtime, such as waiting for a delivery, and from low output caused by poor tools or unclear instructions, which are failures of management rather than of the employee. Managers should check the cause before assuming the worst.
The financial cost is easy to underestimate. Each hour of idle paid time costs the employee's wages, plus the share of benefits, equipment and office space attached to them, often called the loaded cost.
Multiplied across a team and a year, even a few hours a week can reach tens of thousands of dollars. The best response is usually to manage outcomes, not hours.
Clear goals, regular check-ins and visible deliverables make it harder to hide and easier to spot genuine problems. Heavy surveillance can backfire, damaging trust and encouraging people to look busy instead of being productive.
Employers also need to be careful with the legal and human side. Claims should be based on evidence and handled through a fair process, and some apparent idleness may reflect workload mismatches, health issues or poor management.
Fixing the cause is often cheaper than disciplining the symptom. It also helps to separate behaviour from system.
If many people appear idle at once, the cause is likely to be scheduling, a bottleneck or a shortage of materials, not individual attitude. Finance and operations teams can work together to measure utilisation, meaning the share of paid hours spent on productive work, and to find where the gaps are largest.
In practice
Real-world examples.
Example
A department head notices that a team member is always at his desk but produces little work. A conversation reveals that the employee has been waiting for access to a system, so the real problem was a bottleneck, not laziness.
Example
A call centre finds that some agents stay logged in but do not take calls. By tracking calls handled per hour, the supervisor identifies the pattern and sets a target that is fair and clearly communicated.
Example
A consulting firm bills clients by the hour and discovers that one contractor inflated timesheets by about 6 hours a week. The firm refunds the client $7,200 and tightens its timesheet approval process.
Formula
Calculation
Annual cost of goldbricking = Idle hours per week x Working weeks per year x Loaded hourly cost x Number of employees
Suppose each of 10 employees wastes 5 hours a week, and the loaded hourly cost is $40. With 48 working weeks a year, the cost for one employee is 5 x 48 x $40 = $9,600. For the team of 10, the cost is $9,600 x 10 = $96,000 a year.Case study
Seen in the real world.
Stonebridge Logistics is an illustrative, fictional warehouse operator with 60 staff. The operations director suspected that productivity had slipped, but was unsure whether the cause was poor practice or lack of work.
An audit showed that, on average, pickers spent about 4 hours a week waiting for inventory to be moved or for instructions. At a loaded hourly cost of $30 and 50 working weeks, the idle time cost 4 x 50 x $30 = $6,000 per person, or $360,000 across 60 staff.
Most of the idle time was caused by poor scheduling, not by staff choosing to avoid work. The illustrative lesson is that the first step is to measure and diagnose, since the true cost of idle time can be high even when nobody is cheating.
Watch out
Common mistakes.
- Assuming every period of low output is goldbricking, when it may be caused by poor tools, unclear tasks or lack of work.
- Relying on heavy monitoring instead of clear goals, which can damage trust and encourage staff to appear busy.
- Ignoring the cost because it does not appear as a separate item in the accounts.
Questions
People also ask.
Where does the word come from?
It comes from a swindle in which a worthless brick was painted to look like gold.
Is goldbricking the same as taking a break?
No, short breaks are normal, and goldbricking refers to deliberately avoiding work while pretending to be busy.
How can employers reduce it?
Set clear goals, track outputs instead of hours, and build a culture in which people feel their work is valued.
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