Net misuse costs firms billions
p2pnet.net News:- Websense claims internet misuse in the workplace costs American corporations more than $178 billion annually in lost productivity.
And, This translates into a loss of more than $5,000 per employee per year, it says.
However, Ars Technica’s Ken “Caesar” Fisher isn’t buying into that. “Let’s stop a minute and think about how they’ve landed on this startling number,” he writes.
“First, Websense and Harris Interactive conducted a poll that indicates that 50% of office workers access the Internet for work Aand personal reasons.”
Ah Yes. Harris Interactive. It’s a company much favoured by various components of the entertainment and software industry cartels as they attempt to convince people that black is white.
“With 68 million workers in the US with online access, this gives us 34 million workers using their Internet access for personal reasons,” Fisher continues. “The poll, coincidentally, consisted of 500 users workings at employers with 100+ employees. So, we go from 250 personal use hits to 32 million nationwide.”
But how much are they using it? “IT decision-makers polled believe that employees are spending an average of 5.9 hours per week surfing the internet for non work-related reasons,” states the Ars Technica post, and, “You can see where this is headed,” says Fisher. “Got that? IT ‘decision-makers’ ‘believe.’ Studies based on beliefs are always particularly convincing. Or not.
“You take this number, multiply it by the number of people postulated to use the ‘net for personal reasons and work, and you end up with a massive amount of hours lost in a year. 9,817,600,000 to be exact. Slap in the average American salary cut into hourly rates, and you end up with US$178 billion lost to CNN and the Hampsterdance, among others.”
Curiously, Websense had better numbers to use, he continues.
“The same poll used to determine usage percentages also indicated that users themselves reported 3.4 hours per week of non-work related surfing. I guess the extra 2.5 hours a week added by ‘IT decision-makers’ and their ‘beliefs’ is attractive, since that adds a ripe 4,160,000,000 hours to the pot.
“Add to this the fact that IT decision-makers weighed in at 354 people, and we’re left wondering why the hours calculation was done not only with an incredibly biased pool, but with a statistically weaker sample. OK, so we’re not really wondering about it, but you get the point.”
Now Fisher says he’s, “waiting to see a good study done on how many hours the average employee spends doing work-related stuff online, at home”.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
Websense – Workers rely on web to perform personal tasks on company time, draining employee output, July 19, 2005
Ars Technica – Web surfing costing businesses nearly $200 billion?, July 20, 2005
Harris Interactive – New p2p file sharing report, p2pnet, May 19, 2004
July 22nd, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Could some person who likes to invent statistics come up with a load of errrm, well statistics on how much time is wasted by people thinking, gossiping and office politicing….