Twenty-Nine Percent of Workers Holiday Shop Online While at Work, Finds Annual CareerBuilder.com Survey

Half of Employers Monitor Workers’ Online Activities

CHICAGO. - It’s the time of year again for eggnog, good cheer and of course, a bit of online holiday shopping in the office. Nearly one-third (29 percent) of workers, in line with last year’s findings, plan to holiday shop online while at work this year, but it may be best saved for lunch hours or break times; half of employers report they monitor the Internet use of employees. This is according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.com conducted between August 21 and September 9, 2008, among more than 5,600 U.S. workers and more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals.


As seasonal online shopping ramps up on Cyber Monday, a term coined by the National Retail Federation for the first Monday following Thanksgiving, productivity in the workplace will be impacted. Of those who plan to holiday shop online this season while at work, 43 percent of workers anticipate they will spend more than one hour, 23 percent said they will spend two hours or more and 13 percent will spend three hours or more.

“While employers are unlikely to terminate workers for online holiday shopping during the workday, employees should proactively police their personal Internet usage,” said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources for CareerBuilder.com. “In addition, employees need to be aware of company Internet policies, as more than a quarter of employers surveyed monitor workers’ time spent online and sites visited. Employees can then determine if it is best to designate their lunch hour or break times for online holiday shopping.”

Internet Usage at the Office

* Research: Sixty-one percent of workers use the Internet for non-work related research and activities while they are at work. Among these workers, 37 percent said they spend an average of more than 30 minutes of their workday on non-work related online activities and 18 percent said they spend an average of an hour or more.

* E-mail: When it comes to digital correspondence, 20 percent of workers send six or more non-work related e-mails per day. Among this group, 22 percent spend more than 30 minutes during the typical workday doing so.

* Blogging: Nine percent of workers surveyed have a personal blog, and while early a quarter (23 percent) of them spend time blogging at work, only 9 percent of them spend 15 minutes or more blogging during the typical workday.

* Social Networking: Forty-one percent of workers surveyed have a MySpace, Facebook or other social networking page. More than one-third (35 percent) of them spend time on their social networking page during the workday with 8 percent spending 30 minutes or more.

* Instant Messaging: Twenty percent of workers use instant messenger at least once a week.

Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 3,061 hiring managers and human resource professionals (employed full-time; not self-employed; with at least significant involvement in hiring decisions; non government); and 6,194 U.S. employees (employed full-time; not self-employed; non government) ages 18 and over between August 21 and September 9, 2008, respectively (percentages for some questions are based on a subset US Employers or Employees, based on their responses to certain questions). With a pure probability sample of 3,061 and 6,194 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 1.77 percentage points and +/- 1.25 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.