You walk by employees' desks and see them furiously typing away, apparently hard at work.

Reality is: the employees might be trading stocks, e-mailing jokes or checking out an online dating site! E-mail and high-speed access have become standard-issue office equipment, abuse of computers in the workplace has become rampant, making the water cooler look like a think-tank. A new generation is spending hours a day frittering away time online - cyberslacking. Cyberslacking is a pervasive and constant problem in the new workplace.

 

Bad news for the Small Medium Business (SMB): social networks are destroying employee productivity. Time and money are being wasted at a higher rate than most employers think, as statistics show 64% of employees use company time to browse sites like Facebook.

With the office computer, day trading, vacation planning, virtual love and hard-core porn are all just a click away. Retailers like Amazon.com, experience their heaviest traffic during the workday, and game sites usage surges during the lunch hour, the message is plain: people who surf prefer to do it at work.  You wouldn’t believe the statistics on porn- According to one study, 70% of all traffic to pornography websites occurs between the hours of 9AM and 5PM – during the typical working day.

 

Is the married employee going to flirt on Facebook or check out the online dating sites from the home computer where the spouse is in the next room? Another example might include Alice chatting with her sister and Sally emailing her mother. Meanwhile, Jonathan, the warehouse manager, is in a chat room trying to get a date. On the surface this may seem harmless, but they cause losses in productivity and slow down a company's computer system. Cyberslacking escalates the risk factors: like gambling and day –trading, if staff lose money can the company be held responsible as an enabler? Who is responsible if staff using a company computer has their identity compromised?

 

As technology advances, each wave has an impact on how we live and work. Look at the amount of time spent on smart phones. MacDonald’s and Tim Horton’s tells employees no smartphones on the floor. In many places today, the Internet has become indispensable. It is a focal point for communications, aiding collaboration and a productivity booster that reduces the time taken to perform tasks. On the flip side, there is the growing concern of abuse and misuse.

 

Security researchers have compelling evidence that these concerns are well founded.

- 56% of employees were using the Internet for personal reasons

-59% of workplace Internet usage was not work related.

-As early as 2005, cyberslacking was considered as the most common way employees wasted time at work.

- According to researchers cyberslacking ranges from little over 3hrs per week to 2.5hrs per day. depending on the study

-In one month, 57 million Americans visited social-networking sites from work, spending an average of 15 minutes per day.

- 20.6 million Americans also visited an adult site from work, last month an average of 8.1 times, according to Nielsen Co.

 

 

 

How do you know? If you don’t have control, you really don’t know. Can you show me a report that lists the company wide top 10 web-sites? Probably not. Do you know for certain whom the biggest internet user is? Not likely. Clients are constantly shocked when we start delivering our reports. At a car dealership the first business related site placed 14^th on the list, with the #1 position going to Oprah.com. At a food distribution plant, management was shocked to find largest volume user was the night staff, they were supposed to be loading the trucks!

 

THE PROBLEM:
Statistically, an overwhelming majority of employees and employers feel it is ok to surf non-work-related websites while on the job. The difference of opinion comes when surfing turns into an obsessive distraction.

“There is a difference between checking your personal email to reply to your mother and spending 10 minutes of every hour updating your social network profile.”

On average, workers with an Internet connection spend 21 hours per week online while in the office, a little more than four hours per day. And on average, 26% of that time is spent on personal-interest websites. That amounts to roughly an hour per day, or 22 hours per month.

 

THE SOLUTION:
ITS-Secure.ca can supply and install a Gateway Protection Module that can provide WEB CONTENT FILTERING with numerous custom policies.  Standard policies block nudity, pornography, swimsuits and intimate apparel along with illegal drugs, terrorism and many more. Custom policies may allow on-line shopping for certain employees tasked with purchasing or on-line banking for company only. The program allows ITS-Secure.ca security specialists to analyze activities performed by employees and the time spent on different work items. It also affords the ability to track computer usage at a group and/or an individual level, cross-reference activities reported by an employee. 

The Gateway Protection Module usually pays for itself. The increase in productivity covers the monthly cost and then some, giving the Small Medium Business (SMB) a positive cash flow. The most remarkable aspect is the Gateway Protection Module provides a lot more than just the content filtering. Talk to your ITS-Secure.ca security specialist.

 

WHY MONITOR?
You want to demonstrate that company computer usage policy is not just a piece of paper. You want employees to know that you are watching, and there are consequences if policy is violated. Once employees know that traffic is being monitored, the amount of cyberslacking is greatly reduced.

Courts have ruled that companies are responsible for providing a workplace environment devoid of harassment. Unfortunately, sexual harassment can be a direct result of cyberslacking. According to one study, 70% of all traffic to Internet pornography websites occurs between the hours of 9AM and 5PM – during the typical working day.

It is a matter or productivity: You can get an extra hour per day out of each employee. Can you think of any other way to obtain that kind of productivity boost?

 

The SMB owner can get more information by downloading some of our Whitepapers on our website www.ITS-Secure.ca