Cyber Monday Cost Your Company Money

Dec. 8, 2010 - PRLog -- Cyber Monday has come and gone but the loss of productivity is just beginning.  CNNMoney reports that 14% of employees have reported using some part of Cyber Monday to shop during work hours. Out of this 14% in your workforce about 40% will spend an hour or two while a reported 33% will spend over five hours.

Paul Shanahan regional vice president at Adecco warns employees that no matter how good the deals are “no online shopping discount is worth placing their career at risk.” Not only are the employees putting their job at risk but the company is also suffering.  Let’s do some quick math: If you have a medium size business of 50 employees and 14% will be shopping. You have seven employees that will be unproductive. Three of those employees will have two hours of downtime while two employees will have five hours of downtime and the other two employees might have 30 minutes. If you add those numbers up, in one day your company will face 17 unproductive hours. If you pay your employees an average of $20 an hour than that day you would pay $340 for your employees to shop online.

However, Cyber Monday isn’t the only reason that employees are unproductive. What about Facebook? According to a study back in 2007 Facebook was costing employers more than $5 billion a year. Fast forward 3 years later and Facebook’s popularity has skyrocketed. This means that more and more people are occupying their work hours sending friend requests and posting status updates on their wall. If you walk around your office chances are that you will catch at least one employee that is "tweeting", "facebooking" or possibly even blogging.  Over a course of a year these unproductive hours can easily add up and end up making an impact on whether you stay in business for another year.

Nucleus Research released the results of a recent employee survey that show that companies that allow users to access Facebook in the workplace lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity. In this survey employees shared that they accessed their Facebook accounts as much as two hours a day on the job, with 87% of those surveyed admitting that they had no clear business reason for using the social network. Other employees even confessed that they were conducting a job search and applying for other jobs while on the clock. Are you paying for your employee’s job search?

So how can your company improve productivity? Take some suggestions from the Commissioner of Human Resources in Vermont who has recently reported that Internet usage at the agency dropped by 25 percent – a full 2,300 hours – in the first week of a new program designed to monitor their web viewing habits. Nerds Support is a Miami based computer support company that specializes in creating such programs and implementing them in order to properly monitor employee’s web viewing habits. They can track what websites your employees are visiting, how much time they’re spending there and even block sites that shouldn’t be accessed at the workplace.

Although, some employees still need access to these sites there are special programs that can regulate who can access what. Scott Richman owner of Nerds Support (http://www.nerdssupport.com) reports that by implementing this type of monitoring service the average 50 person company can reclaim over $150,000 worth of lost work time. If you are interested in knowing how Nerds Support can help you reclaim your money you can call them at (305) 551-2009 they also offer a free initial consultations to businesses that are looking for this type of service.

“As a small business owner myself I can’t afford for my employees to be unproductive.” “Small businesses in my opinion feel the effect from this cyber slacking more than anybody else and I just want to let them know that we feel their pain and would like to let them know that Nerds Support is here to help them improve their productivity because want to help them stay in business and be successful.”

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Nerds Support offers Computer Support that takes your small business to the next level. With Network Services customized to meet your needs, you can enjoy the benefits of advanced IT Consulting without the hassle of challenging maintenance or support. http://www.nerdssupport.com