About one-quarter of U.S. employees use company computers to access sexual and/or romantic sites and chat rooms, according to the study “America at Work” released Tuesday by the Employment Law Alliance.
Moreover, 43 percent of the respondents aware of the usage feel that it certainly reduces their work productivity; the survey polled 826 employees at more than 800 companies across America.
According to Stephen Hirschfeld, founder and CEO of ELA, these findings are significant because they are the first to show that employees are not simply using the Web for personal use, but romantic, as well.
“Every American workplace has a story to tell about the casual use of company computers for personal purposes, and many of those stories reflect fairly benign behavior such as online shopping,” Hirschfeld stated in an ELA site press release.
“But now we get a clear and compelling insight into the significant use of workplace computers for more explicit sexual purposes well beyond online dating.”
A recent Blog Search Engine survey of bloggers also showed that beyong porn and dating, employees like to blog. While most bloggers do not blog only at or rfor work (only 4.8% do), 53% of those bloggers surveyed do blog in the workplace (at work, or at both home and work).
Additional findings include:
* 12 percent said a coworker or they have accessed sexually explicit websites from a workplace computer
* 12 percent said a coworker or they have forwarded sexually explicit email content to coworkers
* 6 percent said a coworker or they have engaged in sexually explicit online chats or instant messenging during work
* 10 percent said a coworker or they have used the Web for online dating services during work
* 54 percent say these activities don’t have a negative impact on productivity
