Your employees are hard at work at their computers and browsing the web. But are they doing it for the company?

Not completely, according to a Web@Work survey, commissioned by Websense, a California-based provider of employee Internet management solutions.

Across eight regions of the world, 83 percent of respondents said they surfed non-work-related websites during office hours. Chinese office workers are the worst, concludes the survey, because they spend more than one hour a day on personal usage. Specifically, Chinese employees spend 5.6 hours per week on personal Internet usage in the workplace, 1.4 hours more than the average of 4.2 hours for companies in the Asia Pacific region.

While only 26 percent of workers in India handle personal e-mail during office hours, the figure is a whopping 60 percent in China.

In other areas, 16 percent more Chinese devote work time to downloading music than Latin Americans, 8 percent more to online chatting and 12 percent more to online games, than the next worst offenders.

There are bright spots as well: Only 4 percent of Chinese employees admit to browsing porn sites, much less than the figure in Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

But employers in China are taking notice. IT managers across the nation estimate the average weekly time for personal surfing is even higher than the survey's finding -- at 6.2 hours.

Some have taken action. Ruideng Communications, a Sichuan company, recently installed eight micro-cameras in the ceiling, overlooking all the office's computers. Productivity has shot up, but some employees feel uneasy about the surveillance, and have complained about a "loss of privacy."

Zhao Bin, a local lawyer, said that office space is not for private use. As long as the cameras are not installed in bathrooms and the tapes are not released for commercial purpose, he confirms there is nothing illegal about it.

Zhang Yu, a manager with Ruideng, explained that the idea was born out of security concerns after thefts from the office. But management was glad that fewer people were now playing games or watching online movies.

TCL, the world's largest TV maker, has a strict policy on web access. "Our IT department uses specially designed software to track and record all online activities of all employees," Sheen-Lee Wang, spokesman for the TCL Branding Management Centre, told China Daily.

TCL R&D staff are not allowed to use third-party instant messenger platforms such as MSN. "We have our own system for the purpose," said Wang.

On the other hand, big brother may not be the best approach to all functions, some companies believe.

"It is hard for us to draw a clear line between work-related or non-work-related web usage," said Claire Rong, managing consultant for Claire Public Relations Consultancy Ltd, a Beijing firm.

Rong believes the Orwellian model of Web monitoring should not be applied to all positions.

(China Daily August 18, 2005)