Sending the odd personal email, or surfing the web for the latest deals on summer get aways when you are at work might seem harmless, but a recent study found that we can lose up to two hours of the working day* to interruptions. This means that a staggering 57.5 working days a year are wasted on things that do not fulfil our job descriptions.
Alarmingly a recent survey conducted throughout Yorkshire by Sharp Consultancy, specialist financial recruiters, found that only 1% of people surveyed thought it was unacceptable to send personal emails during working hours and a hefty 74% of people thought that it was OK to send personal emails with 4% saying that, in practice, they send emails all the time when they should be working.
83% of respondents said that they use the internet for personal use while they are supposed to be working and the most popular reason for using the internet at work is online banking. Other popular personal uses of the internet at work are paying bills and booking holidays as well as using chat rooms, ebay-ing and even online gambling.
Mark Wilson, managing director of Sharp Consultancy, comments: “Obviously the people we questioned generally feel it is OK to use the internet either for personal emailing or web browsing while they are at work. But if we are wasting 57.5 working days a year on activities like emailing friends, booking holidays or even online gambling it will be at considerable cost to our regional economy.
“I certainly wouldn’t advise putting a stop to all personal usage of the internet or email at work, that would only disgruntle employees, but guidelines should be set out so that everybody is clear about what is acceptable, and what is not. Depending on the nature of the business, I would suggest that personal use of internet and email should be allowed, but only in lunch time or before and after working hours, and never from a work email address.
“In any situation, staff should not be sending personal emails from a work email address. While at work employees should be acting as ambassadors for the company, and if a mistake was to happen and an email was sent to the wrong person, which is very easily to done, it could have embarrassing or even disastrous repercussions for the business.”
