Where Do Workers Go Online?

MAY 24, 2006

The secret is out; employees who work online also play online, and they do so on company time.

To no one‘s surprise, the seventh annual "Web@Work" study from Websense, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that employees spend time at work accessing non-work-related sites.

Some 61% of respondents with a work-owned internet connection admitted that they spend at least some time surfing non-work-related Web sites during the workday.

Of those employees who access non-work-related Web sites, the average time spent accessing the internet at work is 12.81 hours per week, and the average time accessing the non-work-related sites at work is 3.06 hours per week. In other words, on average, 24% of their time on the internet at work is not work related.

Where do they go online?

There are some surprises in the answer to this question. Also worth noting is the fact that where employees say they go and where systems administrators report they go do not always agree.

Employees who admit to visiting non-work-related sites at work, say they go to map sites (83%), news sites (80%) and weather sites (76%) most often.

The first discrepancy between what employees say and what IT managers report concerns the amount of time spent accessing non-work-related sites. Management estimated that employees spend 5.7 hours per week on personal surfing at work, over two hours more than the amount admitted by employees.

When asked what types of non-work Web sites employees visit, management cited weather sites (75%), map sites (73%), and news sites (70%); closely reflecting the answers given by employees.

However, there is an odd discrepancy at the top of the list. 93% of the employees said that they went to work-related sites but employers reported that only 58% of users had work-related sites in their history list.

Comparing visits to the types of sites further down the list, other large differences appear.

For instance, 3% of employees reported visits to dating sites, but employers said 18% of them had accessed dating sites. Sex must make people shy, because only 1% of employees said they went to adult sites, while management put the figure at 11%. Only 1% of employees said they went to gambling sites, employers said 9% did. And 0% said they went to hate sites, while the managers said 3% did.