42% of employees spend over an hour a day online shopping

(Financial Post)

The IT management company Ipswitch asked its customers how long their employees are spending shopping online in the lead up to the holidays.  

From those polled, 28.3% didn't know how long their employees were spending online undertaking Christmas shopping. Out of those that did track activity, 42% found that staff were spending more than the average lunch break undertaking Christmas shopping online, hitting business productivity and the bottom line of the company.

Shopping online is becoming the de facto route of choice for many during the festive season. comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, earlier reported that holiday season spending thus far had topped $15 billion in the US alone, marking a 15-percent increase over last year. The now infamous 'Cyber Monday' reached $1.25 billion, up 22 percent versus a year ago, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day on record to surpass the billion-dollar threshold.

Full results to the question "How long do your employees spend shopping online for the holidays?" were:

0 - 30 minutes per day - 13.4% 

30 minutes - 1 hour per day - 15.7%

1 - 2 hours per day - 15.0%

Over 2 hours per day - 15.7%

I don't know – 28.3%

Our web policies restrict this - 11.8%

"Online shopping is no longer just being done after work hours and it appears that liberties are bei! ng taken, with many staff spending up to two hours a day shopping online during working hours," says Ipswitch Network Management Division president, Ennio Carboni. "In addition to lost productivity, online shopping can put additional strain on business-critical network infrastructure, so it is imperative that network administrators are aware of what traffic is flowing around the network."