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Internet at work
[June 30, 2011]

Internet at work


Jun 30, 2011 (San Bernardino County Sun - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Workers could be costing your business thousands of dollars, according to a recent survey by Northern California-based Harmon.ie.

The social email provider commissioned a survey on workplace distraction, which found that employees cost businesses $10,375 per person, per year because of workplace distractions. That's more than the average U.S. driver will spend to own and maintain a car.



"We were surprised to learn that it was so significant, but we found that people were staying connected at times that may be disruptive, rude or detrimental to business and personal relationships," said Jenna Dobkin, a spokeswoman for Harmon.ie.

"People need to learn when it's important to stay connected to the social networks and when it's time to turn off their devices." According to the survey, 53 percent of workers waste at least an hour a day due to all types of distractions. Users reported getting sidetracked in email processing 23 percent of the time. They also reported being distracted with personal online activities such as Facebook (9 percent) and messaging (11 percent).


Social media and personal email have become primary forms of communications for many, so it has become harder to keep them focused in the workplace, according to Keith Ross.

Ross is product manager for networking products at Black Box Corp., a communications and infrastructure products company with several California offices, including in Fontana and Culver City.

"An increase in usage of media-rich sites can also place a considerable strain on limited bandwidth, which can hurt the performance of critical business tasks," Ross noted. "The challenge is establishing a proper workplace balance." He offered the following tips and strategies for managing workplace Internet usage: 1. Accept that employees are going to need to conduct some personal business. Limited usage of Gmail or Yahoo Mail, as well as personal accounts should be allowed to give employees a connection to their personal lives.

2. Use a tool that can help you accurately measure and report Internet bandwidth usage. Establishing a benchmark allows you to fairly assess the situation and address the most frequented sites and the heaviest individual bandwidth users.

3. Take a more granular approach that allows the use of certain sites, but at a throttled-down bandwidth level so business processes are not slowed. By slowing the access to a site such as Facebook, employees can use the site, but might get frustrated at a slow-loading page.

4. Treat employees like grown-ups. Don't publicly shame those who visit undesirable sites or who spend too much time online.

5. Beware of the workarounds. If you take draconian measures and restrict all personal Internet usage, employees might use proxy sites or other tricks which introduce your business to malware and are difficult to manage and detect.

6. Frame your need to limit personal Web use in terms of business performance. For example, describe how streaming movies at work is severely interrupting important systems, which will affect everyone at bonus time.

7. Consider tailoring access by department or individual. Marketing might need greater bandwidth for YouTube campaigns, for example.

To see more of the San Bernardino County Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sbsun.com. Copyright (c) 2011, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com.

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