Internet Misuse: Bandwidth Does Matter

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Recent studies demonstrate that upwards of 25% of Internet bandwidth in an office are consumed by employees misusing the internet. According to Gartner, the average growth of business email volume is 30% annually, with the average size of the email content growing in parallel. Add to this the growth of Web misuse from streaming media, downloads, file sharing, social networking, and spam, and it becomes pretty clear that the mismanaged cost to business of non-work-related Internet use is already bad and getting worse.

There are plenty of examples, including employees wasting more than two hours a day on recreational computer activities (according to a survey fielded by AOL & Salary.com) and that, according to an IDC report, “30% – 40% of Internet use in the workplace is unrelated to business.”

Studies and surveys such as these typically focus only on lost productivity — and there’s no doubt that’s bad enough. But they rarely discuss the significant hidden financial impact of bandwidth wastage from these activities.

Internet Misuse: Bandwidth Does Matter

And you wonder why access to certain sites is disabled at your workplace?

[Dan]

Originally Posted by HTMLBasicTutor

Internet Misuse: Bandwidth Does Matter

And you wonder why access to certain sites is disabled at your workplace?

I think the disabling is less about bandwidth and more about employees wasting time and not focusing on the reason they are at work. i.e. to do their job.

e.g. Sitting on facebook all day could hardly be considered work, though I doubt it consumes massive amounts of bandwidth unless people are looking at photos and videos all day long.

[pctec]

I am all for blocking sites at the workplace... but then again, I'm all for key loggers, screen capture, and close scrutiny at the workplace as well. I think some people have forgotten what it means to go to work. You are not supposed to love work, you are supposed to do it out of necessity. Lucky are the few who love their work

[andr97]

Well, I must admit, I also may waste some time chatting on Facebook, so they'd better ban it for me, in order to make my work more effective, but I won't tell them that...

[Dominic_ace]

I don't think office workers are motivated to work efficiently

you get no reward for finishing tasks on time, if you finish all you work you still have to sit around and fill the hours, so over time you elongate your hours.

Office behaviour isn't always conducive to a happy working environment, the "professionalism", "corportate culture" and general office poltics which I don't think is paticularly healthy means that workers have to connect with their friends on facebook to get some social time.

If workers were given incentives to work efficiently like if they were to finish all their tasks and allowed to go home, rather than pay by the hour or salary, they will work more efficiently.

Some jobs such as receptionists means that for periods of time they are very busy and other times not so busy, so they have to sit around and wait for calls/"act busy" etc.