Staff waste company money surfing all day

Eight million man-hours are lost each year in the UK by employees surfing the Net instead of doing their work. The abuse is so bad that 20 per cent of IT directors say that their organisation is "seriously effected (sic) by staff wasting time on fruitless web browsing". What's more, the authors of the Black Box Network Industry Survey said that Internet abuse is a "significant concern for the nation's companies". A third of all Net users spend an hour or more a day surfing, excluding handling email. More that ten per cent of those people surveyed said they spent more than two hours a day online. One in 40 spend more than half their working week online. "Our findings indicate clearly the need for companies to look again at their management controls over Internet access," said Patrick Hudgell, Black Box technical director. Earlier this month an IT manager was sacked for surfing the Web during her lunch hour. Lois Franxhi lost her appeal at a tribunal in Liverpool after her employer said she used the company's resources to scour the Net in search of cheap holidays. ®