Trying to measure your surfing at work

From...

By Scarlet Pruitt

(IDG) -- The Internet, this grand master of information once ushered into businesses as an invaluable workplace tool, now is being judged by some as something less benign: a costly employee time-waster.

At least this is the premise on which one firm is selling its new employee Internet management software, claiming that United States companies lose billions of dollars per year because of employees' recreational Internet use.

QUICKVOTE How much personal Web surfing do you do at work per day? Less than 10 minutes. About 20 to 30 minutes. Thirty minutes to an hour. An hour or more. View Results     EXTRA INFORMATION You may be under company surveillance right now. The Society for Human Resource Management did some checking up of its own and asked just what companies test for and collect data on. See what's up.

San Diego-based Websense says estimated that U.S. companies lose $63 billion a year in productivity because of the Net, which Websense company claims is a "major distraction" for employees.

Websense -- which is a software maker, not a research company -- in an August 1 statement says it bases its assertions on the U.S. Census Bureau's average salary figures. Websense analysts say an hour of work is lost each week in personal employee Internet use by employees.

The statement doesn't define the company's methodology but there do seem to be some corroborating reports in the industry. A January 2000 report from technology researcher Gartner, for example, stated that although access to the Net empowers users to gather and process information very quickly, "Internet use in many organizations is a large contributor to lost user productivity."

Gartner didn't estimate the amount of money businesses lose in productivity through unsanctioned Net usage, but the report did state the need to limit how employees use the medium.

Gartner's report, entitled "Components of a PC Policy," said that corporate computer policies should warn employees that the Internet should not be used for any nonwork-related purposes. The Gartner analysts conceded, however, that a total elimination of leisure browsing is not realistic, and suggested that employees be permitted some "casual" Internet use, something akin to personal phone calls from work.

But while policies are all fine and good, actual Net practice may not be in compliance.

IDG.net INFOCENTER InfoWorld Main Page InfoWorld Test Center Subscribe to InfoWorld Newsletters Infoworld Opinions and Spotlights Visit an IDG site Choose a site: IDG.net CIO Computerworld Darwin Dummies.com GamePro.com The Industry Standard ITWorld.com InfoWorld.com JavaWorld LinuxWorld Macworld Online Network World Fusion PC World Publish.com UnixInsider IDG.net search

A Nielsen/NetRatings study released a few weeks ago revealed that at-work Net use grew 23 percent from June of last year to June 2001. Although the study didn't break down the numbers according to personal and work-related use, it was clear that Nielsen's people saw workers spending more time than ever online.

Given this, companies including Websense are selling products that attempt to control the amount of time employees can use for recreational Web use.

Websense recently released its Enterprise Version 4.3 software, which allows IT administrators to set quotas as to how much time employees are allowed to spend surfing the Net for personal purposes each day. After the allotted time -- say 30 minutes per day given to employees to surf entertainment and shopping sites -- access to the Net gets limited to work-related sites.

The company, which offers an array of EIM software, says it has half the Fortune 500 as clients and lists on its Web site partnerships with companies including Microsoft, Inktomi, Netscape and Cisco Systems.

If businesses are demanding more Net control of their employees, workers may want to reconsider where they choose to do their surfing. The suggestion is that one day "access denied" could become a frequent message on-screen.