Is employee shopping online during work hours a serious problem in your workplace? With the holiday season upon us, there will be a sharp spike in online shopping, and, according to the National Retail Foundation (NRF) much of it will take place by employees during work time.
The NRF reports that when consumers don't find what they want to buy in stores beginning "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving, publicized as one of the busiest shopping days of the year) or that weekend, they begin spending significant time the following Monday shopping on the Internet. The NRF has even coined a term for this day -- "Cyber Monday."
Shopping Is Rampant
"Each Monday between Thanksgiving and Christmas sees a spike in e-commerce, so it is not so much a Cyber Monday as it is Cyber Mondays," said Robin Simkins, vice president of marketing at Chicago-based Performics (www.performics.com), providers of online marketing services and technologies for multichannel marketers.
In fact, the NRF reports that 51.7 million people shopped for gifts online during the 2005 holiday season -- while they were at work.
Should employers try to stop this online shopping frenzy outright? If they do, they will probably fail. According to a recent HR.BLR.com poll, most employers neither prohibit nor try to curtail online shopping. More than half (56 percent) of HR professionals responding to the poll said their company's employees are shopping, but the HR staff doesn't recognize online shopping as a big problem.
Only 13 percent said employees are not shopping because their organization strictly prohibits shopping online during work hours. And, just as many (13 percent) of the HR professionals admitted that they themselves did some online shopping while at work!
However, 18 percent of respondents said that employee online shopping is a significant distraction, and those who think online shopping is hurting productivity shouldn't simply throw up their hands.
What Employers Should Do
So in lieu of an outright ban on online shopping to reduce lost work time and productivity, what can you do? You might want to request that employees limit shopping to lunch periods and breaks, or as a perk, provide additional time, perhaps 15 to 30 minutes each Monday, for employees to complete their online shopping.
"Employers are not likely to have great success in limiting shopping to lunch hours. Employees are distracted with holiday shopping stress anyway and may shop online regardless of your company policies," Simkins said. "In reality, today's professionals are putting in more hours, and the lines between home and work are often blurred."
"Many dedicated employees work overtime and/or answer e-mails and telephone messages during off hours. This behavior transcends the holiday shopping rush, so that throughout the year, employees are ultimately giving additional work time to their employers," Simkins said.
By acknowledging that your employees are participating in online shopping and encouraging employees to spend controlled time doing it, you will be helping to alleviate their holiday stress, while you are losing less employee productivity than if your staff is leaving the premises at lunchtime and trying to squeeze shopping trips into their 30 minute to 1 hour lunch break. Often employees don't make it back to their desks in the allotted time anyway.
Spread Some Goodwill
"This situation might also provide an opportunity to foster some goodwill with both your employees and local charities," Simkins said. "You could ask your employees to show you shopping receipts on Cyber Mondays and develop a matching gift program for charity on those days. Use your imagination, and support your employees' work-life balance issues at the same time."
Whatever you decide is the best way to handle employee online shopping, keep in mind that working to address it so it becomes a management employee perk will probably be the most effective.