Black Friday Deals 2015: Half of employees are using time at work to shop online. 42 percent are holiday shopping on their smartphones or tablets, up from 27 percent last year. Survey results indicate a four percent increase in employers that have fired an employee for holiday shopping on the Internet while at work this year compared to last year.
"In a world where the lines between the professional and personal are becoming more and more blurred every day, it's not surprising that more employees are bringing personal activities to the workplace," said Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder. "Employees should follow the rules, but employers should be careful not to micromanage. The issue should be more about performance than about what employees are doing with their time."
As mobile technology continues to have a growing presence in the workplace, more workers are using their gadgets to shop. Forty-two percent of employees use their personal smart phones or tablets to shop, a strong increase from last year (27 percent).
Following last year's record low rate in the post-recession era, employees are once again boosting their online shopping game, hunting for deals and checking out their carts from their cubicles, according to CareerBuilder's annual Cyber Monday survey. Half of workers (50 percent) say they'll be spending at least some work time holiday shopping, up 3 percent from last year. Of this group, 42 percent will spend an hour or more doing so.
Employers aren't turning a blind eye to this this holiday season. Twelve percent of employers say they've fired someone for holiday shopping on the Internet while at work (compared to 8 percent last year), and 56 percent say their organization blocks employees from accessing certain websites from work - up 3 percent from last year.
The national survey was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder from August 12 to September 2, 2015, and included a representative sample of 3,321 full-time workers and 2,326 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries and company sizes.
More than one third of employers (35 percent) said that even if performance isn't affected, they care if employees spend time on non-work related emails and websites. With the ever-looming distractions offered by technology, many have taken stronger measures to prevent loss of productivity this year.
