KEY POINTS:
Staff wasting time at work surfing the net and sending emails to friends are costing Kiwi businesses millions of dollars a year in lost productivity.
Doing the maths on how badly firms can suffer as a result of staff surfing the day away is pretty easy. In New Zealand for example, Trade Me attracts 460,000 unique visitors a day and each spends around 18 minutes listing, browsing and bidding on the website. Over 12 months that adds up to more than 15 years of surfing this auction site alone.
If all those 460,000 people access Trade Me during work time, and each earns a conservative $20 an hour, then the cost to businesses is $2.7 million a day.
In addition, plenty of people use the net to catch up with friends on social networking sites, watch video, chance their arm at online gambling, do internet banking and book holidays and cinema tickets. So these figures on non-work related net use may be just the tip of the iceberg.
It seems for many people the distraction and ease of access to the internet is just too hard to resist. For this reason some firms are starting to block certain sites during normal working hours - opening up blocked sites during the lunchtime.
Bandwidth theft is another issue affecting employers. One of the ways this happens is when staff use a company computer to download files to portable music players such as iPods or download software to a USB memory card for use at home. It all adds up to a drain on company resources and contributes to clogging up the company computer network. Which is probably why the staff usage predictions of IT managers can go out the window.
A study by staff at Monash University in Australia has found that workers are spending more than a quarter of their work time doing non-work related activities. The study, Internet Use and Misuse in the Workplace, looked at the prevalence of cyber-slacking, a term that refers to both surfing and emailing for personal correspondence.
Dr James Phillips and Kerryann Wyatt, from Monash's School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine in Victoria, assessed the internet use of 83 volunteers that took part in a survey in 2006.
The questionnaire broke internet use into the following applications: email use, searches, e-commerce, games and downloading. Those surveyed were asked how often or for how long they spent each week using the internet for these purposes at work.
Phillips says the survey has identified not only how much time is wasted by workers using computers, but the personality traits bosses can watch out for - neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Wyatt says the study shows that cyber-slacking can seriously affect workplace productivity, with those taking part in the survey admitting to spending more than a quarter of their time on the internet doing non-work related tasks.
Phillips says staff wasting time on the internet forces companies to create, publicise, revise and monitor its internet usage policies. He says their survey shows that more than a quarter of the self-reported time spent on the internet at work was for non-work-related purposes.
"Email was the most frequently used application, both for work and non-work purposes. Games and downloading were least frequently used," says Phillips.
"People who were more open to experience were more likely to use the internet as a valuable tool for information/leisure searches to satisfy their widespread interest and need for stimulation, rather than for personal uses."
He says the survey shows that people considered to be disagreeable spent more time on the internet. "Such people could be using the internet to access services that they would otherwise have trouble accessing because of their poorer social skills," he says. "Or it may just indicate that these disagreeable types are given more of the non face-to-face sorts of jobs."
Phillips says previous research on internet usage at work has shown that the more people perceive their workplace as unjust, the more they are likely to rationalise the practice of cyber slacking.
From his research, Phillips says the most notable finding was the relationship between extroversion and internet use.
"Although past research has primarily found that introverts use the internet for communication purposes such as email and chat, this study contradicts this stereotype," he says. "Instead, it contributed to the growing support of more recent studies that it is actually extroverts that use, and abuse, the internet as a means of socialising and developing relationships, as well as for sensation seeking."
"Extroversion was not only associated with the number of work-related emails sent, it was the only significant predictor of misuse."
"It is extroverted employees that seem to be slacking and passing notes to each other when there is work to be done."
Phillips says that most company internet usage policies allow for some private use, and while there is concern for illicit web-based activities such as viewing pornography, gambling and copyright violation, it appears that the more commonplace internet applications such as personal email use may be reducing office productivity.
Maria Berryman, an employment lawyer with Bell Gully in Wellington, says employees expect to be able to use the internet at work.
"I think it is today's generation, they expect to carry on their personal and social lives while at work," she says. "So rather than blocking it and preventing staff having access to the net I think employers have to accept that this is the way it is and put policies and rules in place."
She says while firms can block access to certain sites, a blanket ban on using the internet is a non-starter for firms that want to recruit the best people.
"Young people want to access the net while they are at work," she says. "And it won't necessarily impact on their productivity. In fact, it may well be an advantage to the employer in terms of keeping the networks open with their peers and the industry."
However, Berryman says companies need to have a clear written policy on staff's use of the net at work. Without it, she says, employers will find it hard to communicate what is and is not acceptable use.
However, she says firms that introduce a written policy need to update it regularly.
"Three years ago the big issue was staff visiting porn sites - that is not such a big problem today," she says. "Most of the people that did that sort of thing are much wiser now."
But Berryman says companies may have a bigger worry than staff wasting time on the net. Her concern is what they may write about the firm or their work colleagues on blogs and social networking sites.
And to cure that issue will take a big brother approach to the workplace - something few people would want to see.
YOUNG GUNS
Statistics appear to show that the younger you are, the more time you are likely to spend surfing the net at work.
Year of Birth - Time wasted at work
1930-1949 0.50 hrs/day
1950-1959 0.68 hrs/day
1960-1969 1.19 hrs/day
1970-1979 1.61 hrs/day
1980-1985 1.95 hrs/day
Data from 10,044 survey respondents
Source: salary.com
Contact Steve Hart at
www.stevehart.co.nz
