Perspective: It's my Internet--I can do what I want

Employees are roaming free on the Internet for their own personal use while at work, according to a recent survey of more than 10,000 employees by Burstek, a provider of employee Internet management solutions.

The unofficial worker anthem seems to be, "It's my Internet--I can do what I want," (perhaps sung to the tune of The Animals' "It's My Life").

Some of the findings of the study are fairly startling. For example, employees across all industries spend 20.42 percent of their Internet viewing time at work on personal business or personal entertainment activities. Along these lines, 20.01 percent of all Internet access at work is for personal use, 22.39 percent of all Web pages accessed at work are for personal use, and 21.28 percent of all work bandwidth costs are attributed to personal use.

Plainly, employers have good reason to be worried about personal Internet use in the workplace.

Such personal use would appear to detract from time devoted to work-related tasks and can increase employer costs.

According to the study, 72.34 percent of all employee personal use of the Internet in the workplace has to do with "employee productivity draining Web sites," including the following types of sites in order of highest use: shopping, entertainment, personal e-mail, sports, chat rooms, job searches and game playing. This "employee productivity loss" group accounts for 93.99 percent of personal use bandwidth costs for employers.

As if this alone were not worthy enough for concern, the study goes on to document that 8.23 percent of the personal use of the Internet in the workplace involves visits to Web sites that pose potential legal liability for employers, such as pornographic and gambling sites and sites that contain hate speech and the like.

The study shows that the manufacturing sector has the highest abuse of Web sites that pose potential legal liability for employers, with almost 13 percent of users accessing pornographic, gambling, dating and other sites that can give rise to liability. Surprisingly, education workers come in second in this category, with 2.44 percent of them accessing pornographic Web sites, as an example of their online workplace conduct.

Of further worry, 19.42 percent of personal use of the Internet by employees involves activities that pose potential threats to employer network security, such as file sharing, the use of malicious code, spyware and more.

As it turns out, governmental agencies have the highest incidence of employees accessing sites containing spyware and malicious code. In fact, almost 23 percent of governmental personal use is attributed to these high-risk activities.

Plainly, employers have good reason to be worried about personal Internet use in the workplace. It is important for employers to develop acceptable Internet usage policies and to utilize appropriate Web filtering.

The policies and filtering (if any) should match the given mission and culture of an organization. And while a knee-jerk reaction might be to seriously restrict personal Internet access of employees, employers should bear in mind that some freedom actually can boost employee morale and can lead to increased employee productivity in certain circumstances. Of course, efforts definitely should be made to reduce potential legal liability as much as possible. But this is a sensitive area that deserves care and attention.

Biography
Eric J. Sinrod is a partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris. His focus includes information technology and intellectual-property disputes. To receive his weekly columns, send an e-mail to [e-mail] with "Subscribe" in the subject line. This column is prepared and published for informational purposes only, and it should not be construed as legal advice. The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author's law firm or its individual partners.

More Perspectives

[thenet411]

MySpace.com is a BIG problem

Believe it or not, myspace.com is one of the biggest offenders in this issue. For many businesses, myspace.com is their highest traffic site. Many business IT managers are blocking access to the site out of sheer frustration that users simply spend huge amounts of time at this site either updating their own profiles or reading or commenting on someone else's.

When are employees going to learn that business Internet connections do not belong to them? Why do they believe that surfing these sites and comsuming huge amounts of bandwidth with the lame video or audio feeds that often accompany these profiles is OK for them to do?

I believe that every company with the ability should not only block this site but should also immediately fire anyone caught with myspace.com on their monitor during work hours.

[spec1alk]

thats a little extreme

While I agree that MySpace.com is a big waste of time, I don't think that someone having it on their monitor is grounds for dismissal.

This study is more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.

[vanillacokehead]

why stop there?

While we're at it, why don't we also have employees caught at their workstations viewing MySpace.com subject to being: shot, stabbed, beaten, drawn, quartered, folded, spindled, mutilated, kidnapped, tortured, lobotomized, and forced to listen to singing commercials for days on end (not necessarily in that order)?

I am very comfortable with companies reasonably restricting use of their corporate Internet resources to support their business purposes. It's not only reasonable, but necessary, for corporate IT departments to carry out hardware- and software-based policies to make sure the primary use of Internet resources is for business purposes. I also think that companies should to give SOME leeway to employees for limited personal Internet use when such use doesn't detract from the company's business purposes. As another person mentioned, some people go out to take a smoke break to unwind while at work and others surf the web to unwind. I work for a Fortune 200 company that emphasizes that the primary use of its Internet resources is business use -- but also acknowledges that limited personal use is OK too.

Just my $.02...

[raucuspc]

Seriously people...

When are the media going to stop thoughtlessly using obviously biased surveys as their basis for a news article?

The company that sponsored this study was a "provider of employee Internet management solutions" - get it? a company that sells software to stop employees doing personal activities at work!

And if thats not enough, the numbers don't stand up to even the most obvious analysis...

22.39 percent of all Web pages accessed at work are for personal use

21.28 percent of all work bandwidth costs are attributed to personal use.

So all bandwidth costs are variable and not fixed? If the employees reduced internet use by 20% the companies ISP would reduce it's bill by 20%?

And this line is great...

"employee productivity draining Web sites"

Employers problem with employee productivity won't be cured by buying web surf control software but by inspiring and empowering their employees to care about the work they do.

But hey, signing a check to a software company is so much easier right?

Oh, and can I interest anyone in work blocking software for your home computer?

Paul Pickthorne
[e-mail]

[R. U. Sirius]

I agree

The author of this piece certainly leaves the impression of being an industry shill. I think Cnet would be better served by having opposing opinion pieces, since that is what this article is: opinion.

I guess that Mr. Sinrod has never done any personal errands on work time. Also, I don't see him calling for CEO's to stop having their adminstrators handle personal errands. But then, that would be biting the hand that feeds, correct Mr. Sinrod?

[hkwkejfkw]

you're probably all at work wasting time reading this article

I know I probably would be

[hilhorst]

Results are presented strongly biased

I think the results of the survey this article is based upon are presented in a strongly biased manner. The article states that employees spend 20.42 percent of their Internet viewing time. This should be considerably less than 20.42 percent of their time at work, because I don't assume all 10,000 persons in the survey spend 100 percent of their time at work on the Internet.

Also, the article doesn't mention whether the same employees compensate for their time spent on the Internet on these personal activities.

Also, taking some time to unwind after having dealt with a problem or something may actually improve my productivity for the remainder of the day. Some people go for a smoke, I like to surf to sites like News.com, which in itself also contributes to my work as an IT specialist.

[Mona143]

Monitoring employees internet use may seem too childish or may look like you aren't trusting your employees to do their job well. But as an employer, you also have to consider that you only want to protect any asset that the company has. I think it's only a matter of how you'll explain it to the employees to make them understand it's advantages. This article might help explain something about monitoring employee's internet use
http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2010/11/18/how-to-successfully-monitor-your-employees-internet-usage