Surfing more addictive than coffee: survey

NEW DELHI: Surfing the web for personal reasons at work may be as addictive as the morning cup of coffee. According to the Websense sixth annual Web@Work study, fifty-two percent of employees surveyed who use the Internet at work for personal reasons said they would rather give up their morning coffee than their ability to cruise the Web for personal reasons at work. Forty-four percent favored giving up their Internet access for coffee.






Websense is a provider of employee Internet management solutions. The survey also reveals that Internet usage at work is increasing with ninety-three percent of all employees surveyed saying that they spend at least some time accessing the Internet at work (up from 86 percent in the 2004 Web@Work survey).





Among those employees surveyed who access the internet at work for personal reasons, the most popular types of non work-related websites accessed at work are news (81 percent), personal email (61 percent), online banking (58 percent), travel (56 percent) and shopping (52 percent).





Among the employees surveyed who access the Internet at work, the average time spent accessing the Internet at work is 12.6 hours per week. Among the employees surveyed who access non work-related websites at work, the average time spent accessing non work-related sites is 3.4 hours per week. However, IT decision-makers surveyed estimated that employees spend an average of just under six (5.9) hours per week surfing non work-related websites.





According to the study, 23 percent of men who access the internet at work said they had visited a porn site while at work, while only 12 percent of women had done so. Of those respondents who admitted to viewing pornography sites at work, 17 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women admitted it was intentional.





Listening to or watching streaming media (18 percent) and using instant messaging (16 percent) are still the most popular computer-based applications used at work at least once a week by those employees surveyed with internet access at work. However, playing games at work has decreased-only six percent of employees said they play computer games at work, down from 14 percent in 2004.





IT decision-makers surveyed on average estimate that six percent of an organization's total disk space is taken up by non work-related files, such as mp3s, photos, and movies.