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Irregular News for 10.04.05
A recent Harris Interactive poll found that employees with Internet access surf the Web on personal business for an average of 3.7 hours a week. But in a survey in July by Salary.com/America Online, 10,000 employees reported an average of 2.09 hours per day of personal surfing -- a quarter of the work week!
"Everybody does it," says Tate, a Texas sales representative who declined to give his last name, as did all of the employees interviewed for this story (and if you have to ask why, you've never had a boss).
"And if they say they don't," adds his co-worker Chris, "they're lying." She estimates her nonwork Internet use at a couple of hours a day; she's looking for a new house and a good deal on a vacation right now.
Does this mean workers aren't doing their jobs as well as they could be? In some cases. There was the egregious example of an employee running an eBay business from his work station. How's that for multitasking? Oh, and there was that study out of King's College London, reported recently by PC World, which indicated that participants' IQs dropped 10 points when they tried to work and deal with e-mail messages at the same time. But a reasonable amount of personal surfing makes for happier employees, argue some experts, even as it translates into more companies fretting over what those workers are doing on the Internet, and how much it's costing their business.
The Salary.com poll put it at $759 billion in wasted salaries. And that doesn't include the cost of battling spyware, viruses and lawsuits that arise from employees downloading all manner of seemingly benign programs or viewing offensive sites. Rhonda is a receptionist for a Fort Worth law firm. She has lots of downtime during which she's a slave to the Internet.
"I read the news. I correspond with family. I shop on the Internet," she says. Last month, while at work, Rhonda bought her son a few school shirts from Hollister online.
Recently Rhonda's bosses gave her a project, so she doesn't have as much time to surf. "But I can't help myself," she says. "I keep checking."
As a sales rep for a Fort Worth silk-screening company, Lou would easily spend two hours a day doing personal Web business.
"Paying bills, banking, travel, chatting with friends," he says. Lou didn't feel the need to hide it from his boss, because, according to him, he was still doing his job. "(When) I'm on the phone talking to a client," he explains, "I can still be working the Internet at the same time."
Business owners are stressed big time over how workers are using the Internet. They're increasingly using high-tech gizmos to track Web usage and block what they consider undesirable sites.
More than 75 percent of businesses monitor workers' Web site visits. Sixty-five percent use software to block sites, such as the shopping, gaming and job posting sites, according to a 2005 American Management Association survey. That's 27 percent higher than in 2001. That means no Amazon.com, no PokerRoom.com and no Monster.com.
Casey Flinn sells a clever piece of hardware called iPrism. It's a little box that plugs into a computer system. It lets the IT folks block, monitor and filter everything that attempts to pass through the company's cyberspace "perimeter," says Flinn, a senior product marketing specialist for St. Bernard Software in San Diego, Calif.
Flinn says that technology like his protects employees, well, from themselves, "from the perspective of making sure they're productive," he explains. "Most people understand there are certain things you just don't do at work. But they'll think 'I need to check my Hotmail and click my nanny cam, and there's a psychological progression to 'I need to check my bank account, sports...' "
But lagging productivity "is just the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to reasons businesses need to monitor their equipment, Flinn says. Companies need to protect themselves from computer viruses and spyware, and from making sure company secrets aren't fodder for Internet chat rooms.
"Anything anybody downloads that's free is never a good price," says system administrator Keith Bratton at Fort Worth's Rattikin Title. "Screensavers, that sort of thing: puppy dogs, kitty cats, fish, falling leaves, emoticons, those smiley faces: all spyware," he says.
But not all companies view personal Internet surfing as a bad thing. First of all, says Laura Hartman, a professor of business ethics at DePaul University in Chicago, some employees have no choice.
"We're in a challenging economic situation, our employers are relying on us more," she says. "In the meantime, if they're going to take up a lot of our life, it leaves very little personal time, and therefore the lines between our professional and personal life get blurred."
Most companies, she says, would probably "rather their workers shopped over the Internet than took two hours for lunch."
And most employers don't want to dampen morale by instituting draconian Internet policies, says McCausland.
"You don't want to smack everyone's hand for one person doing something wrong," she says. Stellar Technology's products allow employers to customize Internet access, like granting access to shopping and travel sites during lunch hours.
Plus, yet another survey, this one conducted in part by the University of Maryland, showed that though employees may spend several hours a week conducting online personal business at work, they more than make up for it by doing business-related stuff at home.
Full Story
A recent Harris Interactive poll found that employees with Internet access surf the Web on personal business for an average of 3.7 hours a week. But in a survey in July by Salary.com/America Online, 10,000 employees reported an average of 2.09 hours per day of personal surfing -- a quarter of the work week!
"Everybody does it," says Tate, a Texas sales representative who declined to give his last name, as did all of the employees interviewed for this story (and if you have to ask why, you've never had a boss).
"And if they say they don't," adds his co-worker Chris, "they're lying." She estimates her nonwork Internet use at a couple of hours a day; she's looking for a new house and a good deal on a vacation right now.
Does this mean workers aren't doing their jobs as well as they could be? In some cases. There was the egregious example of an employee running an eBay business from his work station. How's that for multitasking? Oh, and there was that study out of King's College London, reported recently by PC World, which indicated that participants' IQs dropped 10 points when they tried to work and deal with e-mail messages at the same time. But a reasonable amount of personal surfing makes for happier employees, argue some experts, even as it translates into more companies fretting over what those workers are doing on the Internet, and how much it's costing their business.
The Salary.com poll put it at $759 billion in wasted salaries. And that doesn't include the cost of battling spyware, viruses and lawsuits that arise from employees downloading all manner of seemingly benign programs or viewing offensive sites. Rhonda is a receptionist for a Fort Worth law firm. She has lots of downtime during which she's a slave to the Internet.
"I read the news. I correspond with family. I shop on the Internet," she says. Last month, while at work, Rhonda bought her son a few school shirts from Hollister online.
Recently Rhonda's bosses gave her a project, so she doesn't have as much time to surf. "But I can't help myself," she says. "I keep checking."
As a sales rep for a Fort Worth silk-screening company, Lou would easily spend two hours a day doing personal Web business.
"Paying bills, banking, travel, chatting with friends," he says. Lou didn't feel the need to hide it from his boss, because, according to him, he was still doing his job. "(When) I'm on the phone talking to a client," he explains, "I can still be working the Internet at the same time."
Business owners are stressed big time over how workers are using the Internet. They're increasingly using high-tech gizmos to track Web usage and block what they consider undesirable sites.
More than 75 percent of businesses monitor workers' Web site visits. Sixty-five percent use software to block sites, such as the shopping, gaming and job posting sites, according to a 2005 American Management Association survey. That's 27 percent higher than in 2001. That means no Amazon.com, no PokerRoom.com and no Monster.com.
Casey Flinn sells a clever piece of hardware called iPrism. It's a little box that plugs into a computer system. It lets the IT folks block, monitor and filter everything that attempts to pass through the company's cyberspace "perimeter," says Flinn, a senior product marketing specialist for St. Bernard Software in San Diego, Calif.
Flinn says that technology like his protects employees, well, from themselves, "from the perspective of making sure they're productive," he explains. "Most people understand there are certain things you just don't do at work. But they'll think 'I need to check my Hotmail and click my nanny cam, and there's a psychological progression to 'I need to check my bank account, sports...' "
But lagging productivity "is just the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to reasons businesses need to monitor their equipment, Flinn says. Companies need to protect themselves from computer viruses and spyware, and from making sure company secrets aren't fodder for Internet chat rooms.
"Anything anybody downloads that's free is never a good price," says system administrator Keith Bratton at Fort Worth's Rattikin Title. "Screensavers, that sort of thing: puppy dogs, kitty cats, fish, falling leaves, emoticons, those smiley faces: all spyware," he says.
But not all companies view personal Internet surfing as a bad thing. First of all, says Laura Hartman, a professor of business ethics at DePaul University in Chicago, some employees have no choice.
"We're in a challenging economic situation, our employers are relying on us more," she says. "In the meantime, if they're going to take up a lot of our life, it leaves very little personal time, and therefore the lines between our professional and personal life get blurred."
Most companies, she says, would probably "rather their workers shopped over the Internet than took two hours for lunch."
And most employers don't want to dampen morale by instituting draconian Internet policies, says McCausland.
"You don't want to smack everyone's hand for one person doing something wrong," she says. Stellar Technology's products allow employers to customize Internet access, like granting access to shopping and travel sites during lunch hours.
Plus, yet another survey, this one conducted in part by the University of Maryland, showed that though employees may spend several hours a week conducting online personal business at work, they more than make up for it by doing business-related stuff at home.
Full Story