Are you Guilty of “Cyberloafing?”
author
Adam Burton
Marketing Senior
Many employers are finding cyberloafing to be the number one contributor to production. Some employees surf the web because they are bored, or some because they do not have enough work. Either way, more and more employees are partaking in this practice at work. Cyberloafing is not only affecting the businesses production, but more importantly it is affecting the businesses pocketbook.
SOURCES
World Wide Words. Cyberloafing . www.worldwidewords.org
Aftab, Parry. The Privacy Lawyer: Cyberloafing's Drain on Productivity . www.techbuilder.org
Management-Issues. Americans spend two hours a day dosing. www.management-issues.com
Markowitz, Bonnie. Look Over Your Shoulder . www.varbusiness.com
Levine, Daniel. Companies step up efforts to monitor employees . www.bizjournals.com
I bet most people reading this will run to their computers and look to google.com for the answer. I am also willing to bet that the majority of the people that will be doing this will be at work, on the clock, using the company's time to answer this question. So, let's solve some of the mystery and do the search for you.
Cyberloafing, according to worldwidewords.org (the first link to come up on the google search), is “surfing the Net while at work.” “Surfing” the Net ranges from checking one's email, or purchasing items on e-Bay.com. Most of you are probably thinking that this really isn't that big of a deal, or that everyone is doing it. But the reality is, this issue is becoming an overwhelming problem for businesses both big and small.
There are many reasons why people practice this counter productive act and it is because of this, that businesses are changing there procedures.
EMPLOYER'S REASONING FOR CYBERLOAFING
Perhaps the number one reason for the cyberloafing in business is the claim that employers aren't given enough work to keep them occupied; this according to management-issues.com . The second major reasoning behind cyberloafing is the notion that the employees feel that they are underpaid. Another overwhelming response was actually quite simple, “I am bored.”
Whatever the excuse may be, cyberloafing is taking up nearly 2 hours of an employee's time up a day. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this statistic is that people have admitted to checking personal sites while on the clock, but most alarmingly, maintaining a second job while at work at their “primary” job.
CYBER LOAFING'S BUSINESS EFFECTS
Techbuilder.org states that according to “some studies estimate that employers are losing up to $50 billion annually in wasted employee time and resources online.” This statement alone makes a good point to consider cyberloafing a drastic issue in the business world. The time and the resources that are being wasted by employees in the business world are quite ridiculous.
It is also forcing businesses to restrict websites and monitor employee's computers. This type of preventative action is said to save corporations billions of dollars in lost productivity each year ( varbusiness.com ). They have even named this type of employee watching, calling it EIM (Employee Internet Monitoring).
Businesses now have to spend more time and money verifying what their employees are doing in order to have a productive and well flowing staff.
With the newly acquired attention that cyberloafing has received from employers, there will be a new trend in corrective action. According to bizjournals.com :
“The New York Times and Xerox are among the companies that have (implemented new corrective measures)... and most recently, Dow Chemical Co. fired 24 employees for email abuse and disciplined another 235.”
These types of statistics will be only the beginning of what will come in the future for employees across the country. So, next time you need to look something up, I suggest maybe looking in your Webster's Dictionary.