What is the single greatest threat to the UK economy at present? The decaying and shambolic transport system? Alcohol induced sickies and stress levels? If a number of new studies are top be believed, it is none of the above.

Cyber-loafing - the endless hours spent by staff on personal emails and web surfing - is reaching endemic proportions. If not checked, office time lost to these (innocent) pursuits will have a significantly detrimental effect on the UK economy.

The extent of the problem in terms of financial loss has yet to be quantified but new research by law employment firm Peninsula reveals that employees spend 40 per cent of their day surfing the Internet or sending personal emails.

The survey of more than 3,000 employers highlights how the problem has become increasingly serious during the past year. Each worker spends an average of three hours a day browsing the Internet, which represents a 50 per cent increase on the previous year’s figures.

According to Peter Done, the Managing Director of Peninsula, “these results prove that employers are unaware of how significant the problem is for their businesses, and depending on the size of the company the problems may alter in real significance from bad to severe."

A separate study conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) seems to back this up. In a survey that incorporated 1,000 companies nearly two thirds of larger companies, and one in five of all businesses, reported staff misusing company systems. The two biggest causes were excessive personal emails and access to inappropriate websites.

Joanna Severinsson of Technology company Websense warns: “Every Internet connected desktop is effectively a whole personal entertainment system just waiting to be used.”

If this sounds slightly over the top then consider the following figures from the DTI survey:

• Nearly a third of companies now have no controls at all over email compared to over 12 per cent in 2002.


• The number of companies that restrict who can access the web has dropped to 29 per cent from 45 per cent.


• Nearly a third of all companies (though just 4 per cent of large businesses) have no controls in place at all.

Organisations that monitored Internet access reported a considerably higher numbers of cases of misuse, which suggests companies who do not have controls in place are letting incidents go undetected.

According to Severinsson it is not only lost man-hours that companies should be concerned about: “Inadvertent employee Internet activity is often the major cause of corporate security lapses. Employees are often unaware of the grave consequences of their surfing habits.”

A survey conducted by Silicon.com implies that excessive cyber-loafing is a symptom of a much deeper-rooted problem. 32.9 per cent of respondents felt Cyber-loafing was a direct result of monotonous, unchallenging jobs and was therefore the fault of managers and HR departments for not motivating staff properly.

Whatever the reason you can be sure that email and Internet monitoring equipment will be coming your office in the very near future - if it is not already there!