Study says workers waste a quarter of every day online

Any time I write about the subject of free time at the office, two camps emerge in the comments, both of them equally bitter toward the other: One side says that company time is company time, and if you're even glancing at eBay or Amazon during working hours, you're stealing money out of your employer's pocket. The other side says to get a grip: Breaks, personal time, and a few minutes spent playing Dolphin Olympics aren't going to bankrupt the company and can help workers focus when they do return to task.

Both sides are likely to have a field day with a new report that says, for better or worse, the average worker spends 25 percent of the business day wasting time on the Internet, whether it's eBay, Facebook, IM, personal email, or more. That's two full hours in an eight-hour workday. The study also claims that 80 percent of emails sent at the office are personal.

The report looks at the issue from a security standpoint, noting that much of the illegal material distributed over peer-to-peer networks is seeded by corporate networks, so not only are employees wasting time sharing movies and music on the web, they're opening the company up to potential legal trouble by doing such things at work, not to mention bringing potentially dangerous files in to the organization, exposing it to the risk of malware infestations. (The study was performed, of course, by a security company which would love to help you plug those holes.)

But is all time spent online really "wasted" at the office? The study's author asks himself, "Is it more time-efficient to let staff do their banking online than having them leave the office for half an hour?"

I'll add to that: How do you separate business from pleasure in every case? Is it really "wasting" time to watch the stock market plummet if it's wiping out your company-sponsored 401k? Calgon, take me away!