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There are many ways to calculate the losses generated by the misuse of the internet in the corporate environment, as there are numerous ways for a collaborator, intentionally or not, to misuse this resource.
Information security solutions always seek to ensure maximum privacy, integrity, and availability of information, and by being able to meet those requirements, they can also offer a secondary purpose, which is productivity.
The amount of attractiveness on the internet, coupled with the fact that employees use computers in their daily activities, evidences the need to establish access policies that also ensure distractions, since these directly affect employee productivity, causing financial losses to companies.
There are two quick ways to calculate how much the lack of productivity (or misuse of the internet) costs in corporate environments: amount of hours spent on content not associated to work activities, and computer unavailable for inappropriate use.
In this article, we will show you how to use a simple calculation to justify investments in security solutions, or the application of more appropriate policies to the business.
The unproductiveness caused by distraction
We begin this paragraph with a reflection: how many of us use the internet as an outlet during working hours? That is good and perfectly valid for people who have common sense and know how to give it with the freedom provided.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for most people. The current moment highlights high communication, interconnection, sharing, which causes, in addition to digital dependence, great anxiety in individuals, generating irrational impulses that lead them to access social networks or entertainment websites, at inopportune moments, bringing personal losses and professionals.
Each time this is accomplished, whether rational or not, a disconnection with the primary activity is generated, taking a long time for the concentration level, after resuming work, to reach the same point at which it was diverted.
Cell phones can be big bad guys, and computers without a proper internet access policy can have negative impact on the company. In many cases, you need a larger team to do a job simply because there is a lot of wasted time, or lack of focus.
In several other cases, there is a natural loss of daily time with non-work accesses, which are generated at any time since they do not have a restriction or conscience.
These distractions, added up over the course of the day, weeks and months, and multiplied by the number of Times and co-workers, often cause great astonishment to businesses.
By contextualizing these points, and going into the more numbers part, it is easy to identify the direct financial impact caused by the unproductivity. For example, we will work with the following scenario:
Wasted time per day (WTD):1 hour;
Number of collaborators (NC):50;
Hours wasted (HW):((TTD*NC)*20 (days)) = 1000 hours.
This means 1000 hours lost per month. If the average value of the hour paid to the employee is $ 15.00, the monthly impact generated would be $ 15,000.00. These numbers are quite conservative and take into account only unproductive hours. However, distraction in many cases may cause other operational errors that can affect critical areas of the company, resulting in even more significant damages to the organization.
The time lost due to the unavailability of equipment
Not as destructive as the unproductiveness caused by distraction, but also causing negative impacts to the business, we have the unavailability of resources in the company, caused by activities of collaborators poorly instructed in the work environment.
This can be generated in a number of ways, but the main one is associated with consuming malicious content that slows the computer down, has a locking problem, or completely unavailable the feature.
If the company does not have an equipment to replacement, that employee who depends on the computer to perform his daily activities will be standing still, waiting for the equipment maintenance.
Depending on the size of the IT staff, the deadline for making a new computer available can be very high, causing the employee to lose a full day’s work. If you have a history of this type of occurrence, simply multiply the number of hours of unavailability by the average value of the employee.
The sum at the end of the month will give a clear notion of direct damage, other collateral that may occur because of employees not being in their position performing his duties.
The financial perception is not as high as the distractions on the internet, but it can easily be used to justify buying reserve equipment to have a lower replacement time in the face of a similar occurrence.
These two initial approaches in many cases cause extremely positive effects with regard to the greater attention of managers and entrepreneurs on the subject. Like computers, the internet and so on are very common today, there is a risk that certain situations, which negatively impact the results of the company, go unnoticed by the eyes of the managers.
There is no single solution to solving the productivity problem; this varies greatly from culture, business segment and several other variables. What is important, however, is to have moments of outlet using the internet, but with limited schedules, or kiosks around the company, equalizing the expectations.
How do you manage the use of the internet in your company? Have you ever touch how much time you may be wasting and how can you help managers improve the results of every company? Share your experiences.
This post is also available in: English
