New research has revealed that 80 per cent of employees admit to surfing the web or answering personal email while they’re at work – and it’s not just a matter of a few minutes: the average time spent surfing is more than four hours a week.
The research was carried out by Peninsula BusinessWise which was alerted to the problem after a number of employers rang their legal helpline asking what they could do.
Peninsula’s senior employment law specialist Mike Huss said: “Internet and email abuse seems to be more common. I’m quite shocked that 8 in 10 workers admit to using company facilities to check their email or surf the Internet.
“On average an employee wastes four hours and ten minutes of their employer’s time – discounting lunch periods – checking their email and surfing the web. Now this may not at first seem a huge amount of time, but when you have full-time workers who are contracted to 39 hours per week then it becomes substantial.
“Consider what happens if you employ a part-time worker who may only work 20 hours a week, again it’s a significant number of hours. One has to take into account the financial constraints that personal web browsing imposes on the business.
“Four hours of lost time is not only a financial loss, you also lose time when checking for viruses that have may have been accidentally downloaded.”
The guidance from Peninsula is to:
- Define clear rules about when employees can and cannot use the Internet and what it can be used for
- Make sure these are readily available
- If you choose to make personal use of the Internet a disciplinary offence then make sure this is made clear to new employees as well as existing employees and built into contracts
- If it is a disciplinary offence that could lead to dismissal make sure you follow the correct procedures, otherwise you could risk being taken to a tribunal.
Huss suggested that personal use of the Internet could be allowed during non-working time: during lunch breaks or before or after the employee starts work, for example.
