Cyberloafing at Work

Prevalence of Cyberloafing

One third of the time that individuals spend on the Internet takes place at work, and over half of that time is not work related. A survey by http://Vault.com indicated that almost 88% of employees surf non-work-related Web sites during working hours, and 66% surf between 10 minutes and one hour. Likewise, 82% of employees send non-work-related e-mails during work hours and nearly 87% receive them. The most commonly accessed Web sites at work involve game playing, investment or stock trading, shopping, adult activities, sports, job hunting, and gambling.

Problems Associated with Cyberloafing

Although the Internet and e-mail have changed the way organizations do business by offering rapid communication and enhanced information access and distribution, cyberloafing can create problems for companies. Employees can flood computing resources with their personal use, leading to clogged bandwidth and degraded system performance. Furthermore, cyberloafing reduces productivity, creates security issues, and increases the risk of computer viruses. It also exposes companies to legal liability in the form of harassment (e.g., employees e-mailing sexist or racist jokes to coworkers), copyright infringement (e.g., employees using clip art found on the Internet without permission), defamation (e.g., disgruntled workers posting rumors about a manager in a chat room), and negligent hiring (e.g., an employee cyberstalking a customer).

Reasons for Cyberloafing

Few research studies have explored reasons why employees cyberloaf, but in general, they indicate that it is a response to mistreatment in the workplace. For example, a study by Vivien Lim, Thompson Teo, and Geok Leng Loo found that Singaporean employees agreed that cyberloafing is justified when they put in extra effort to attain the information or resources they need to perform their jobs, work overtime without compensation, are asked to do excessive amounts of work, or are exposed to conflicting demands. Likewise, a study by Lim using the same Singaporean employees discovered they were more likely to cyberloaf when they perceived unfair treatment by their employer (e.g., unfair work outcomes, policies, or interpersonal interactions).

More recently, Christine Henle and Anita Blanchard demonstrated that employees engage in cyberloafing more often when they perceive their jobs as stressful. Thus, cyberloafing helps employees cope with stressors in the workplace. Importantly, employees are less likely to use cyberloafing as a way of coping with stress when they perceive organizational sanctions against it (e.g., discipline). Unfortunately, research on cyberloafing has not explored whether certain types of people are more likely to cyberloaf (e.g., impulsive individuals, procrastinators). However, Henle and Blanchard did find that males were more likely than females to cyberloaf.

...