24 July 2010

What Price - Accessing Internet At Work

I was reading today some statistics which were compiled duirng 2000 about the use of Internet in  the workplace . These results are from 2000..  can you imagine what the more current figures would be???  If I do find a more recent survey I will post it here as an update.


Employees who abuse Internet privileges have become a major concern among today’s corporations. According to a survey of human resource directors, approximately 70% of companies provide Internet access to more than half of their employees and recent statistics show
that employee Internet abuse is on the rise. In a survey of 1439 workers by Vault.com, an online analyst firm, 37% admitted to surfing constantly at work, 32% surfed a few times a day, and 21 % surfed a few times a week (Adschiew, 2000). In a survey of 224 corporations by Websense,
Inc., an electronic monitoring firm, 64% of the companies have disciplined, and more than 30%
have terminated, employees for inappropriate use of the Internet (Websense, 2000). Specifically,
accessing pornography (42%), online chatting (13%), gaming (12%), sports (8%), investing
(7%), and shopping at work (7%) were the leading causes for disciplinary action or termination.
In an online usage report conducted in 2000 by eMarketer.com, 73 % of U.S. active adult users accessed the Web at least once from work, 41% access the Web a majority of the time at work, and 15% go online exclusively at work (McLaughlin, 2000).
The issue has become critical as organizations attempt to minimize productivity losses that result from such employee Internet abuse, which can represent billions in lost revenue (Stewart, 2000).
Vault.com estimates surfing costs $54 billion annually in lost productivity (Adschiew, 2000).
For instance, in the summer 2000, Victoria’s Secret posted a forty -four minute, mid-work day
webcast. The broadcast had an estimated audience of two million viewers, costing Corporate
America as much as $120 million. According to estimates by research firm Computer Economics, companies lost $5.3 billion to recreational Internet surfing in 1999.
Computer Economics notes that online shopping, stock trading, car buying, looking for a new house, and even visiting pornographic sites have become daily practices for about 25 percent of the workers in U.S. companies that have access to the Internet in their offices. For example, after the peak of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandals, ZDNet reported that industry experts estimated American companies lost $470 million in productivity to employees reading the salacious document online.

8 comments:

  1. ...well thats where the TBIC button got its name...

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  2. OOHH This is SO true!!
    I have co-workers that watch movies "while waiting for the machine to run the test" .. simply unable to DO anything else but sit there and "watch the machine work" - right?!
    oohhh and then, they get upset when the boss calls them on this .. it is amazing to me how individual ethics are so different.

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  3. My ISP tech team admitted they just surf the net between calls.

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  4. G'day mancalui.. and nice to see you here.

    A friend had posted a blog with a survey asking people to advise of their online useage whilst at work and I left my comment there .. Ill copy and paste it here in a reply to yours. But it got me looking on line for recent survey that may exist about productivity, or lack of , because of Internet use in the workplace. I was really suprised by the figures above .. and they are TEN years out of date.. !!

    Hope to see you again soon . Thanks for your input too

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  5. yummmalishus wrote on Jul 25, edited on Jul 25
    in 2008 and 2010 I was employed at the same work place. There were times when I could have been online browsing if I chose, and my employer actually on four occassions that I recall ( who,herself, does alot of online shopping online during work hours) had told me that she was more than happy for me to be online. But as I told her, I always managed to find something work related to do.

    The other staff who worked in the office on my days off always found time to be on Facebook, but I did notice that they never found time to do the incidental things that I did.. ie.. stock up stationery, clean the staffroom refrigerator, dust the office, .. and something that I found beneficial during my quite time was learning my way around the computer programs we used at work that I was not familiar with.

    I suppose what I am actually taking a long time in saying is, that I believe when at work, there is always something you can do that is work related in the, more quiet, times.

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  6. In between your calls?? you call them often Dave?? lol

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  7. If employers don't specifically threaten with punishment, ppl will abuse this privilege...really happening much more than should; much waste of productivity!

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  8. Naah there always on the internet LMAO

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