DailyTech - Study: Workers Spend 60% or More of Day Web Surfing for Personal Reasons

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Internet Study: Workers Spend 60% or More of Day Web Surfing for Personal Reasons
Tiffany Kaiser - February 7, 2013 2:53 PM

33 comment(s) - last by Wolfpup.. on Feb 14 at 11:14 AM

Establishing policies alone is not enough

Kansas State University researchers have made a pretty obvious discovery. Workers who waste time online at work won't straighten up with an internet policy alone -- they also need punishments to be enforced.

The team, led by Kansas State assistant professor Joseph Ugrin and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale associate professor John Pearson, have looked into effective ways of dealing with "cyberloafing," or wasting time on non-business-related activities online, while at work.

According to the study, workers spend about 60 to 80 percent of their time at work surfing non-work-related websites. Young people tend to spend time on social networks while older employees conduct online banking.

While internet policies with threats of termination tend to work when it comes to larger matters, like viewing pornography at work, many workers see absolutely no problem with using social networks or conducting personal business while on the clock.

We found that that for young people, it was hard to get them to think that social networking was unacceptable behavior," Ugrin said. "Just having a policy in place did not change their attitudes or behavior at all. Even when they knew they were being monitored, they still did not care."

The team said the only way to get the point across is to spread the word about other employees being punished for abusing their time online. At the same time, the researcher's concluded that this kind of "big brother" behavior could hurt employee morale.

This study will be published in Computers in Human Behavior.

Source: Newswise

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RE: Self employed

By ShieTar on 2/8/2013 4:50:26 AM , Rating: 3

Hey, be glad. If you got those kinds of salaries, you would apparently have to waste 60% of your time just with online banking.

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RE: Self employed

By dgingerich on 2/8/2013 11:57:39 AM , Rating: 3

No, the big salary people waste 80% of their time in meetings, just trying to keep track of employees and projects. My boss spends all day Tuesday and Thursday in meetings of various types, including lunch time. Most of his Mondays and Fridays are the same. Fridays, he wanders by my cube and gives me a bunch of new stuff to do or fills my email inbox with new projects.

I wouldn't take triple my salary to deal with that. I'm fine with my 'average' wage, as long as I only have to go to 2-3 meetings per week. I'm not even sitting at a desk 50% of my time. I'm usually sitting at a crash cart rebuilding a server, moving a server, installing a switch, putting more cables up, or connecting up a library. It's fun. Having a fun job is worth more than making a lot of money.

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