Internet Usage in the Workplace

BY SARA TEMPLETON

As the media spotlight turns its attention toward Internet usage at work, the question remains - is there a problem?

Recent research suggests that employees are spending more and more of their official work time browsing the Internet for subjects unrelated to their work.

As one of Australia's oldest and most respected Internet portals, Web Wombat welcomes this news with open paws, though many employers aren't so cheery at the prospect of its workers - who are paid to do a job or service - who are surfing the net at work.

The Internet is an important tool for any company in today's modern world of bluetooth technology and instant email, with tasks such as video conferencing and online purchasing making the lives of many businesses a lot easier, not to mention more efficient.

According to an article in The Age, published July 18, 2003, Tino Fenech, a Griffith University marketing lecturer, said that an average of 40 per cent of employees used the Internet for personal reasons according to his new study.

'Personal reasons' could involve researching the price of the latest Ford Falcon, checking out who won the tennis the night before, buying some roses for your mum and even things such as gambling and pornography also rate a mention, despite these last two often being sackable offences.

The newspaper article reports that Mr Fenech surveyed 300 people, all from south-east Queensland, in a research exercise that was supposed to gauge what the shopping habits of Queenslanders were.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Fenech discovered that more than 40 per cent of the people he questioned said that they used the Internet connection at work - during work hours - to do online shopping among other things.

In light of this evidence, how does an employer then deal with the issue of personal use of business tools, such as telephones and the Internet?

An IT policy, that's how.

According to some industry bodies, employees are often in the dark in regards to Internet usage policy, and sometimes are unknowingly breaching policy guidelines.

Many companies have introduced new Internet and phone usage policies to curb the increasing personal usage of what are often faster work-based broadband Internet connections during work hours, and far from just lost productivity, there are other ramifications if such guidelines are not in place.

For a lot of businesses, particularly law firms, it is necessary to check all emails that could lead to potential legal issues, regarding copyrights and confidential information for instance.

In addition, if the entire staff of a company all decide to download large MP3 or DivX (DVD video) files simultaneously, the servers would bottleneck and crash - another issue systems administrators need to be aware of.

And then there are the financial issues involved: Sure, lost productivity can cost in the longrun, but there's also the question of rising bandwidth costs, and with more and more audio/visual features appearing on websites, it can cost companies dearly, while employees may be unknowingly adding to Internet costs.

Businesses, companies and enterprises today are more and more relying on software to monitor when, where and for how long employees use the Internet for.

And, if their usage is at odds with the group's IT policy, it can often end with a reprimand - or worse, being sacked.

Based on our own figures, and with an audience of more than 700,000 unqiue viewers on Web Wombat's portal, some of the busiest times of the day for us (or peak usage from you guys) is at lunch time, which may suggest that many employees use their lunch break to surf the web - I know I do.

Is there a chance this trend will be reversed and the peak viewing times be pushed back to traditional family timeslots - such as 6:30 to 9:30pm - as crackdowns in the workplace occur? Or is the whole issue being blown out of proportion by overzealous executives and media groups?

With more and more studies suggesting that Internet usage at work is spiralling out of control, we could very well see a paradigm shift in the way businesses treat everyday personal usage.