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Description
When you think of Internet addiction, you likely picture someone spending hours playing a game, looking at pornography sites or visiting chat rooms. That's probably why your company has installed firewalls and filtering software on your network that prevent workers from accessing sites that are offensive or unrelated to work.
You're less likely to picture someone like Renae, a state government analyst, who doesn't gamble, isn't consumed by games and does not peruse porn. Yet Renae says she has grown addicted to the Internet.
"I spend five to six hours a day surfing the Internet at work," admits Renae, 28, who did not want to give her last name. She has a master's degree and is considered a top performer in her department. "I know I can get my work done in the last two hours a day, so I cram at the last minute and spend the rest of the time reading newspapers online, checking e-mail every five minutes and looking at my bank statements."
Like Renae, an estimated one in eight people show signs of addiction to the Internet. But because she doesn't fit the stereotypes of the gambler, gamer or sex addict, her addiction goes unnoticed--and undisciplined--at work. She and others like her suck millions of dollars of productivity out of the workplace.
Blocking sites containing sexual content, gambling and gaming remains important, especially for legal protection, but this measure represents only the first step to curbing Internet abuse in the workplace, experts say. HR professionals also need to:
* Educate managers and employees on the signs of Internet abuse.
* Create better policies regarding what employers expect from employees' use of the Internet at work.
* Offer resources to employees who get caught in the web.
"Companies just haven't done enough about Internet abuse," says Kimberly Young, director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pa. "You could have a guy sitting there surfing the Net 20 to 30 hours a week who gets no discipline, and have another guy looking at porn one time and getting fired. But, actually, it's the first guy who is abusing it more in terms of productivity."
Technology research company IDC of Framingham, Mass., estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of employee Internet use is not related to work. A 2006 survey of employees by Websense, a San Diego web-filtering software company, and Harris Interactive, a Rochester, N.Y., research firm, found significant numbers of employees admitting to banking, making travel plans, shopping, job-hunting and taking care of other personal business online while at work (see "Wasting Time," below).
According to a 2005 Gallup Organization report, the average employee uses office computers for nonwork activity about 75 minutes per day. At $20 per hour, that works out to annual lost productivity of about $6,250 per employee.
The personal and professional costs to employees and employers are high. Whether you discipline the employee or offer treatment resources depends on whether you view Internet addiction as a performance problem or a medical problem. Psychiatrists continue to debate the issue. Regardless, current research and empirical evidence from employee assistance program (EAP) providers suggest that employees consumed... |
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