Holiday shopping on the job: Should you try to stop it?
November 5, 2009 by Jim GiulianoPosted in: Behavior, Communication, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Can you limit online shopping at work, without being seen as the second coming of Scrooge? Take a look at the figures and decide.
Managing workers’ online activity is always a headache, but it gets worse this time of year — and when everyone’s being asked to do more with less. How big a problem is it?
A new study by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) found that:
- 63% of workers will do at least some of their gift buying on the job using their workplace computers and systems.
- 46% of IT bosses said company loses an average of at least $3,000 in productivity per employee from online holiday shopping at work.
- 55% of IT bosses reported that their company permits workers to shop online, but has no strategy for educating them about the risks.
Do you need a policy?
Lost productivity during the holiday season is a major concern for many businesses – from employees who take time off from work to shop in person to those who shop during working hours from their company PC, especially during “Cyber Monday,” — the Monday after Thanksgiving and the biggest online shopping day of the year.
Now might be the time to re-state the organization’s policy about acceptable computer usage.” There are also software tools that can help your IT team monitor which sites workers are visiting.
If you’re considering monitoring technology, here’s data from CareerBuilder that may help you decide:
- $580 million: the estimated amount employers lost in productivity on Cyber Monday in 2008.
- 43% of those planning to shop from work on Cyber Monday will spend at least one hour doing so and 23% said they shop two hours or more from their workplace computer.
Tags: Cyber Monday, Information Systems Audit and Control Association
November 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
If people are spending an hour shopping online, isn’t it better than having them take the day off, or leave the office for several hours to shop? Use that hour as their lunch hour and they have to eat at their desks,, and the company doesn’t lose too much productivity since the person wouldn’t be working while taking lunch anyway.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:05 am
No matter how much we educated, our employees were still spending too much time shopping online. We had to block shopping sites. There was some initial grumbling, but now they don’t even think about it.
November 9th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
We blocked shopping site and a lot of other sites a long time ago. And it has helped a tremendous amount. We had to many people playing games and shopping online. We to had some intitial grumbling but reviewed with them again our policies and that they are provided the internet and computer for business purposes not for their personal enjoyment.
We also did not want to encourage people to eat at their desk as there is such a fine line between what constitutes work and what doesn’t with non-exempt employees. Didn’t want non-exempt employees doing a little of both and us thinking they were on their lunch hour and not paying them.