Techtree.com, December 12, 2008

Excess use of Internet at workplace by employees is creating a significant drain on productivity, says the Employee Computing Risk Assessment (ECRA) conducted by Websense India.

ECRA, which surveys for 30 organizations across India covering around 40,000 employees, claims that Internet which is often considered a productivity tool, leads employees to spend countless hours surfing non-business related content. As employees are an enterprise's most valuable resource, the loss in productivity can add up quickly. Some of the most common productivity sinks include online shopping, entertainment, instant messaging/chat, and sports, the results add.

The results say that an average employee frittered away 5.3 hours/ week, not including lunch and scheduled break-time, just in non-business internet surfing. It added that the productivity loss per employee was highest in medium organizations -- 6.2 hours/ week, followed by larger organizations -- 5.5 hours/ week.

The survey also stated that Internet usage in the enterprise directly impacts network resources by affecting quality of service and incurring additional hardware expenses. Areas in which these expenses accumulate include Internet Bandwidth, Network Storage, Cache and Proxy Hardware, and Desktop Storage.

While the Internet provides many benefits, companies also need to prevent access to inappropriate as well as malicious content. Internet-related legal liability risks may appear in many different forms, however, the most common potential risks come from pornography, software downloads, peer-to-peer media, and online gambling, the results say.

Also, the importance of adapting and responding in real-time, to trends and threats in a Web 2.0 world, was evident during these assessments. Web based threats can cost enterprises millions of dollars in lost productivity, and repair costs, ECRA concludes.