Surfing FB at work? Big boss may be watching

Surfing FB at work? Big boss may be watching

Half the companies in Singapore may be monitoring their employees' Internet use at work for excessive personal use, a survey by recruitment firm Robert Half has found.

Some 52 percent of the 75 chief technology officers and chief information officers surveyed in Singapore reported doing this, while one in three block access to some online shopping sites, according to the survey results released yesterday.

The survey, conducted in the middle of this year, also found that Singapore employees spend 9.3 percent of their online activity on websites not related to work, such as doing online shopping, looking up travel sites or checking social media.

This is less than Hong Kong and Japanese employees, who spend 13.2 percent and 14.6 percent of their time online on personal websites respectively.

Employees at large firms with over 1,000 employees spend the least time - just 6.3 percent of their online activity - surfing the Internet during work.

But at the same time, large companies are more likely to block access to online shopping sites, with 56 percent of the Singapore respondents saying that they do so.

Robert Half Singapore's managing director Stella Tang said that larger firms tend to have more controls in place, as they have more resources in their information technology departments to establish policies and monitor employee activity.

"An employee's personal activities need to be weighed against the contribution an employee makes to the company," she added. "If an employee is performing above expectations, few employers will worry about the person spending a bit of extra time getting a holiday sorted or buying a present for the family."


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