Employees who cyberloaf - log on to the internet for their own use - may be doing their bosses a favour, a Massey University study suggests.
Although potentially open to abuse, the fluid border between work and personal life created by the internet was a boon for employees and employers, PhD student Andrea Polzer-Debruyne said.
She found that people whose employers tolerated a reasonable amount of personal emailing and other internet use at work tended to be more open to doing work from home in their own time or making themselves available on-line to deal with clients or handle after-hours matters.
Some workers surveyed said they felt the boundary between work and life was becoming increasingly blurred, with growing expectations of being available online for work at home.
As a result, workers felt justified in shopping, banking and paying bills online at work and were therefore less resentful of being expected to carry out work duties outside office hours.
Using the internet for personal use at work might also reduce stress for employees, giving them mini breaks that could potentially make them more productive, Mrs Polzer-Debruyne said.
"If an employee orders a present or groceries over the net at work, it takes half the time it would if they had to leave the office and do it.
"In reality people can be more productive and balance their work and private lives better."
For many workers, however, using the internet for "cyberloafing" or "cyberslacking" was a way of alleviating boredom, regardless of how busy they were with work or how much they had to do.
After surveying 300 people from New Zealand, Finland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden and the United States, Mrs Polzer-Debruyne found if used within reason, personal internet use could be an acceptable aspect of a "give and take" work culture based on mutual respect and trust between employee and employer.
NZPA
