Most bosses monitor employees' Web surfing at work

London, December 3 : A new study has revealed that two-thirds of British employers keep a check on how many times their employees spend surfing the Internet, and which websites they visit.

An equal number of employers also block "inappropriate" websites, according to the Chartered Management Institute poll of 1,000 managers aged 35.

The survey revealed that older bosses frequently saw the internet as "a massive time-waster" rather than a potentially useful way to work.

It even revealed that one in six managers under 35 considered their employers to be "dinosaurs" when it came to adopting the latest web trends.

Only 49 per cent of those surveyed said that their organisation only "takes up things once they've been tried and tested".

There were only four per cent of the people who said that their employer "falls in love with the latest trend".

"Younger managers are growing up with much greater familiarity of technology and are comfortable using technologies such as mobile video, television on-demand, or information services such as Google and Wikipedia," the Telegraph quoted Jo Causon, director of marketing and corporate affairs at the CMI, as saying.

"Quite clearly, organisations need to harness the comfort levels these individuals have with Internet-based resources, because failure to do so will lead to frustration and the loss of top talent at best, or worse, an open door for competitors to build advantage through a better equipped and enabled workforce," Causon added.

The survey also brought to light the fact that public bodies tended to be more restrictive than private companies.

While 65 per cent of organisations monitored usage, in local government that rose to 86 per cent, and in the police 88 per cent.

The survey showed that 89 per cent of local government bodies blocked "inappropriate" sites.

ANI