Cyber-slacking hits IT productivity

Close to 10 working hours in a week is being spent by the IT professional in India in surfing Internet, thus resulting in huge productivity loss, according to a new study by Websense, a provider of web security solutions.

The study, the details of which the company executives highlighted here on Thursday said, an average employee fritters away 5.3 hours in a week in doing internet surfing, not related to business. The employee productivity loss due to non-business surfing was highest in IT/ITeS sector ( 9.3 hours / week) followed by pharmaceutical sector where an average employee spends 4.41 hours a week in internet surfing, no related to business. The employee productivity loss in manufacturing was 4.2 hours/ week, said the report.

Some of the most commonly online activities by the employees across sectors include online shopping, entertainment, instant messaginghat, and gaming.

The survey included 30 organisations across the country India covering around 40,000 employees, and the organisations were from sectors such as IT/ ITeS, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, BFSI and education. The audits were carried out over a period averaging 7 days, said Websense.

“While the Internet is often considered a productivity tool, allowing employees to spend countless hours surfing non-business related content also creates a significant drain on productivity. Because employees are an enterprise’s most valuable resource, the loss in productivity can add up quickly,” the report said.

Other than employee productivity loss, excessive and non-business usage of Internet also results in network bandwidth loss for organisations. By monitoring 30 organisations, Websense found that the total bandwidth loss by the employees of these organisations in seven days was 805,552,744 KB (805 GB). The top-three bandwidth consuming sectors included IT/ ITeS (250 GB) followed by BFSI (160 GB) and manufacturing (155 GB).

The survey also found that many all the companies participated in the survey were accessing infected Internet sites. About 7,625,796 URLs which host malicious codes were visited during just seven days.

Websense also monitored 2,531,812 visits to URLs with legal liability issues. Adult material (both adult content and sex) sites accounted for most numbers of visits in legal liability by employees in BFSI (97 per cent of total visits) and pharma (89% of total visits) segment.