Cyberloafing in Organizations

A study of how Psychological empowerment affects

Cyberloafing

9/13/2009
Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow

Ashwin V S – PGP25173

Dheeraj Sarwaiya – PGP25182

S Karthikeyan – PGP25191

Nitesh Kumar – PGP25200

Sagar Goel – PGP25209

Sumantra Mukherjee – PGP25218

Ashok Kumar – ABM06018

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
2.1 Cyberloafing
2.2 Psychological empowerment
2.3 Current research study and hypothesis
3. Methods
3.1 Procedures and sample
3.2 Measures
3.2.1 Psychological Empowerment Score (PES)
3.2.2 Organization Cyberloafing Policy Score (OCPS)
3.2.3 Cyberloafing Score (CS)
4. Results and discussion
4.1.1 Demographics and cyberloafing patterns of the surveyed respondents
4.1.2 Organization policies within the surveyed respondents
4.1.3 Psychological empowerment and cyberloafing patterns
4.1.4 Organization cyberloafing policies and employee cyberloafing pattern
5 Limitations of research
6 Implications for researchers and practitioners
7 Conclusion
8 References
9 Survey
1. Abstract

Cyber-loafing is the personal use of email and the Internet while at work. Psychological
empowerment is a cognitive state characterized by a sense of perceived control, perceptions
of competence, and internalization of the goals and objectives of the organization The purpose
of this study is to draw a correlation between psychological empowerment of employees and
their cyber-loafing behaviour.
We propose that psychological empowerment of an employee has direct correlation with their
cyber-loafing behaviour and that employees with higher empowerment tend to cyber-loaf less.
Additionally we propose that cyber-loafing has a positive correlation with stringent
organizational control on internet usage.
One hundred and one people were surveyed and the study found a moderately positive
correlation between the cyber-loafing score assigned to people on the basis of the survey and
the empowerment score calculated from responses to certain questions according to the initial
hypothesis. Also no correlation was found between stringent organizational control and
degree of cyber-loafing. Implications for researchers and policy makers are also discussed.

2. Introduction

2.1 Cyberloafing

Lim defines cyberloafing as employees‟ use of company resources such as (email,

internet etc.) for non – work related activities while at work (Lim, 2002). Cyberloafing is
problematic because they are time consuming and reduce productivity (eg. Online
trading, games), they are inappropriate behaviour at work and can even expose
organizations to legal liabilities (eg, download music , movies). However, if cyberloafing
is limited in duration, it can be considered innocuous.

Inclination to use internet for entertainment or for other non work related activities while
at work increased with the rise in the accessibility to internet for employees. In 2000,
56% of employees were using internet for non – work related activities (Greegard, 2002),
which increased to 59% by 2003 (Griffiths, 2003). With the advent of broadband access
to the Internet in the workplace, the number of web pages viewed by individuals
increased by 55% and amount of time spent online increased by 23%. Of the time spent
online 31% is non-work related [Webspy, 2004]. Studies suggest this time to the order of
2.5 hr per day (Mills, Hu, Beldona, & Clay, 2001).

The abuse of the Internet has emerged as a real problem for organizations which has
resulted in lost wages through decreased productivity (Malachowski, 2005; Scheuermann
& Langford,
1997; Stewart, 2000).

The following statistics demonstrate the rampant abuse of Internet privileges:

• 80% of companies reported that employees had abused Internet privileges, for
example by downloading pornography or pirated software [Fox, 2002].
• 70% of all Web traffic to Internet pornography sites occurs between 9 a.m. and 5
p.m., according to SexTracker, a porn industry consultancy.
• 92% of online stock trading occurs from the workplace during work hours and 46% of
online holiday shopping takes place at work according to Nielson/NetRatings.
• 25% of employees felt they were addicted to Internet usage [Fox, 2002].
• Online gambling was rated as the fifth most addictive activity (by eight percent of
respondents) behind shopping (24 percent), news (23 percent), pornography (18
percent), and ahead of auctions (six percent) [Fox, 2002].

Although there have been numerous research on cyberloafing, few of them differentiate
among the different types of cyberloafing (an exception is Lim, 2002). We feel it is very
important to identify and examine the different types of cyberloafing separately. First, it
is important for organizations to understand what the different types of cyberloafing are
and the frequency with which they occur. Second, by examining the different forms of
cyberloafing separately, we are more likely to understand what leads to the different types
of cyberloafing and also develop appropriate policies or interventions to decrease or
manage their prevalence. For example, some researchers have argued that zero tolerance
or overly aggressive cyberloafing policies may alienate employees, decrease job
satisfaction or stifle creativity ([Block, 2001], [Greengard, 2002] and [Menzel, 1998]).
However, too lax policies can leave the organization open to lawsuits or simply decrease
productivity at work ([Mirchandani and Motwani, 2003], [Siau et al., 2002] and [Sipior
and Ward, 2002]). Organizations should tailor their policies to the different forms of
cyberloafing.

Anandarajan et al. (2004) report that employees and managers created distinct clusters of
cyberloafing types including disruptive cyberloafing (e.g., adult web sites, online games,
downloading movies and songs etc.), recreational cyberloafing (e.g., shopping and
purposeless surfing) and personal learning cyberloafing (e.g., visiting professional groups
and searching for news of the organization).

Disruptive cyberloafing is wasteful and opens the organization up for lawsuits. But
recreational and personal cyberloafing is not necessarily bad or even inappropriate.
Recreational cyberloafing and personal cyberloafing if limited in duration can lead to
creativity, flexibility, camaraderie, and foster a learning environment ([Anandarajan et al.,
2004], [Belanger and Van Slyke, 2002], [Block, 2001], [Greenfield and Davis, 2002],
[Oravec, 2002] and [Stanton, 2002]).

We feel it is very important to identify and examine the different types of cyberloafing
separately and the frequency with which they occur. By examining the different forms of
cyberloafing separately, we are more likely to understand what leads to the different types
of cyberloafing and also develop appropriate policies or interventions to decrease or
manage their prevalence.

2.2 Psychological empowerment

Psychological empowerment has been defined by Conger and Kannungo (1988) as the
motivational representative of self efficacy. It has been talked about as a
multidimensional concept which has sub parts built in it , necessary by the fact that the
combination of these subconcepts actually explains the intrinsic motivation of an
individual towards his/her work.

The four cognitions that form a part of psychological empowerment are:

1) Meaning: Meaning involves a fit between the needs of one's work role and one's
beliefs, values and behaviors.
 2) Competence: Competence refers to self-efficacy specific to one's work, or a belief
in one's capability to perform work activities with skill.
3) Autonomy: Autonomy is a sense of choice in initiating and regulating one's actions
over the initiation and continuation of work behavior and processes (e.g., making
decisions about work methods, pace, and effort).
4) Impact: Impact is the degree to which one can influence strategic, administrative,
or operating outcomes at work.

Together, these four cognitions reflect an active, rather than passive, orientation to one's
work role. In other words, the experience of empowerment is manifest in all four
dimensions – if any one dimension is missing, then the experience of empowerment will
be limited. For example, if people have discretion to make decisions (i.e., self-
determination) but they don‟t care about the kinds of decisions they can make (i.e., they
lack a sense of meaning), they will not feel empowered. Alternatively, if people believe
they can make an impact but don‟t feel like they have the skills and abilities to do their
job well (i.e., they lack a sense of competence), they will not feel empowered as well.

2.3 Research hypothesis

Literature review shows that no research has been done to find the correlation between an
employee‟s psychological empowerment and his cyberloafing patterns while at office.
This study is based on two hypothesis:

 Employee psychological empowerment is negatively correlated with levels of

cyberloafing of an employee
 Stringency of organizational policies on cyberloafing is positively related to the
levels of cyberloafing of an employee

3.Methods
3.1 Procedures and sample
An online survey was administered which was taken by 101 participants, most of whom
were employed. The participants consisted of people who worked in diverse
organisations. Participants with prior work experience and those who had access to the
internet at work, were considered for the study. Eight surveys were omitted because
participants did not have either of the above criteria, which resulted in a final sample of
93.

Participants completed a survey regarding their demographics, their psychological

empowerment, frequency with which they engaged in cyberloafing and their respective
organisational policies regarding non-work related internet browsing activities at work.
While gathering the survey responses, the participants‟ anonymity was respected. 90
percent of the respondents were male and the average age was 25 years – 30 years. The
participants held jobs in different fields which include:
1. Desk Job (82%) e.g. IT and ITES
2. Field Job (8%), e.g. Sales
3. Shop Floor (1%), e.g. Manufacturing
4. Others (9%), e.g. Research

3.2 Measures:
The following scores were calculated to aid the study on cyberloafing:
1. Psychological Empowerment Score (PES)
2. Organization cyberloafing policy score (OCPS)
3. Cyberloafing Score (CS)

3.2.1 Psychological Empowerment Score (PES)

The psychological empowerment score gives a measure of the level of psychological
empowerment of an employee in the context of his work. This score was calculated as the
average of the scores obtained on sixteen questions (Survey Question 2) relating to the
four dimensions of psychological empowerment namely meaningfulness, competence,
autonomy and impact (refer to Qs 4 from the survey attached in the Appendix). Each of
the 16 questions were to be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means the employee
strongly disagrees to the statement and 5 means the employee strongly agrees with it.

3.2.2 Organization cyberloafing policy score (OCPS)

The organization cyberloafing policy score is a measure of the degree of stringency of the
external environment in an organization in terms of the policies and norms related to
cyberloafing. It is calculated as a sum of the product of degree of cyberloafing weight and
the policy weight for all forms of cyberloafing.

Eleven forms of cyberloafing (see Table 1) were assigned a weight for the degree of
seriousness of cyberloafing based on several factors like wastage of company resources,
involvement that a particular form demands from the employee, degree of deviant
workplace behaviour and ethicality. For example, downloading music may be low on
involvement yet high on resource wastage as it wastes company‟s internet bandwidth,
while chatting is higher than most other forms on employee involvement although it is
low on resource wastage. Some forms like watching pornography is high on almost all the
individual scales and hence has a very high cyber-loafing score corresponding to it. Using
these parameters we came up with a degree of cyber-loafing weight as shown in Table 2.

Respondents were asked to provide the organizational policy on each form of

cyberloafing by ticking one of three options:
 Banned as per policy (websites were blocked or breach of conduct was considered
against policy)
 Banned implicitly (unsaid policy accepted within employee circles though there
was no official communication)
 No guidance (no official or informal ban)
Banned as per policy was given a policy weight of 5, banned implicitly a weight of 3 and
no guidance a policy weight of 1. Thus the more policies in place by an organization, the
greater is the organization cyberloafing policy score.
Table 1- Forms of cyberloafing

Activity Weight for degree of cyberloafing

Non-Work Email 1

News/Sports/General Awareness Sites 2

Chatting 2

Social Networking sites 3

Blogging 3

Trading Stocks 3
Online Shopping 3

Online Games 4

Job Hunting 5

Downloading Music/Movies 5

Pornography 5

3.2.3 Cyberloafing score

This research aims at finding a relation between the cyberloafing behaviour of an employee
and his psychological empowerment and organization policy on cyberloafing. In order to
measure the behavioural patterns of cyberloafing quantitatively a composite cyberloafing
score was calculated by taking into account the degree of seriousness of a form of
cyberloafing and the frequency of indulgence in it by the employee.

First we have zeroed in on the different forms of cyberloafing that an employee carries out
in the office. These forms have been rated based on the degree of seriousness as explained
earlier Table 1.

Next, the frequency of indulgence in a particular form of cyberloafing as gauged from the
survey is given a weight of 1 to 5 for responses ranging from „Never‟ to „To a great deal‟
respectively Table 2.

Table 2 – Frequency of Cyberloafing scores

Frequency Frequency Score

Never 1

Sometimes 2

Often 3

Frequently 4

To a great deal 5
The total intermediate score is calculated by multiplying the weight of the degree of
seriousness with the frequency score for each form of cyberloafing and then adding it up for
all the forms.

The intermediate Score however does not give us a comprehensive measure of the cyber-
loafing intensity of a person. A person may be surfing “Frequently” which may be 4 days a
week yet might only be surfing for 15 minutes in a day which does not result in a very high
involvement. Also a person on a desk job has easy and round-the-clock access to the
internet as compared to some other job where the work on the computer/internet is limited.
Hence we also asked respondents how long they spent online during office hours and how
long out of those hours spent online was spent surfing non-work related websites. This
gives us the percentage of time spent in non-work related browsing against overall time
spent online. Thus the final cyberloafing score (CS) was calculated by scaling the
intermediate cyber-loafing score with the usage score.

4. Results and discussion

4.1 Demographics and cyberloafing patterns of the surveyed respondents

Sixty-two percent of the 93 participants have 1 to 3 years of experience and out of these,
78% had Desktop job, 10% had research work, 10% had sales jobs and 2% had floor job.
Nineteen percent of the total participants have more than 3 to 5 years of experience while
only 4% had more than 5 years of experience.

On an average about 60% of the respondents spent less than 4 hours on the internet and
about the same percentage of the respondents also spent about less than one hour surfing
the internet for reasons which are not work related.

4.2 Organization policies within the surveyed respondents

Companies follow two kinds of approaches when it comes to set web related policies.
First approach is to set official policies (written) which states the rules and regulation of
internet usage. The second approach is to have unsaid or implicit policies, i.e. not in
writing. The survey respondent gave mixed results stating that 47% worked in
organizations with explicit written ground rules, whereas 41% are coming from
organizations with verbal internet usage policies. Twenty eight of the participants
company had both explicit and implicit internet policies, whereas 35% of the involved
companies had to no internet policy in placed. There are 10% and 17% of the companies
with only implicit policies and with only explicit policies.

Companies have different views when it comes to banning internet activities. Hence it
becomes important to identify the activities which perceived by organization as a no-no
activities. At one end pornography during office hours are banned by 93% of the
companies and on the other end more than 75% companies are fine with employees
surfing news and sports sites. Companies are most unclear on blogging and chatting with
a 50%-50% split.

Company Policies on Internet Activities

News/Sports/General
Online shopping
Trading/Stocks
Internet Activities

Non-work email
Blogging
Chatting Banned Implicity
Job hunting
Banned As Policy
Online games
Banned
Social networking sites
Downloading music,…
Pornography

0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of Companies

The different forms of cyberloafing can be categorized into 3 categories:

1. Social acceptance behaviour
2. Network
3. Engagement
Pornography is perceived as unacceptable social behaviour and companies prefer to stay
on the positive side of the society. Hence most of the companies do not compromise on
the value system of a country. On the contrary, following news updates and sports are
considered as good habits and hence are acceptable by almost all the companies.
The second consideration is load on company‟s network. Downloading huge data, or
watching videos and listening music online put lot of pressure on company‟s network.
Due to limited resources companies need to come up with explicit or implicit policies.
Third category is time and resource engagement. This category is mainly consist of social
networking sites, online games, chatting, blogging, trading and non work related emails.
The frequency of online shopping is too little to consider hence no explicit or implicit
policies found in companies. Companies having more of implementation work than the
thinking, try to control the time engagement of its employees where as jobs which require
more of the ideating work, are given a sense of freedom by removing such time
restrictions.

4.3 Psychological empowerment and cyberloafing patterns

About 15% of the respondents are female as against about 85% male respondents and there
is a higher percentage (more than 60%) of female respondents with a very high
psychological empowerment (of more than 4 out of 5) compared to males (only about
41.8%) with the same level of empowerment. Also, as expected, the empowerment
increases with an increase in the tenure of the employees. The percentage of people with
high empowerment increases from just about 31% to close to 46% as people‟s experience
increases from less than 1 year to 3 or more years.

The survey results indicate that on an average, respondents with high empowerment levels
spend lesser % of their time spent on the internet for non-work related activities compared
to respondents with low empowerment levels. As hypothesized, we see that the average
cyberloafing score decreases with increasing levels of psychological empowerment. (Figure
2)The empowerment score and cyberloafing score correlate moderately well with a
correlation coefficient of -0.5. Therefore we can say that the level of psychological
empowerment of an employee at work will affect his cyberloafing behaviour linearly to a
moderate degree. Previous research has shown that high levels of psychological
empowerment are positively related to organization citizenship.
Our current research findings also indicate that respondents who are low on empowerment
on an average believe that cyberloafing has positive effects and hence should be allowed by
the organization. Respondents who are on the higher side of empowerment are, on an
average, neutral or moderately positive about organizations allowing cyberloafing (Figure
2). Only 10% of the respondents felt that cyberloafing should not be allowed by
organizations and interestingly these respondents were very high on psychological
empowerment (average cyberloafing score of 4.9). Thus it can be said that most employees
see merit in cyberloafing activities at office but the frequency and seriousness of
cyberloafing that an employee indulges in will depend on his job engagement and
organization citizenship which are closely linked to psychological empowerment.

Distribution of average Cyberloafing Score by

Empowerment Score

4-5 56.3
Empowerment Score

3-4 88.7
2-3 97.4
1-2 181.0
0-1 0.0

0.0 50.0 100.0 150.0 200.0

Average Cyberloafing Score
Figure 2

Should cyberloafing be
Psychological allowed by
empowerment score organizations?
0-1 No respondent
1-2 5.0
2-3 4.2
3-4 3.9
4-5 3.7
5= Strongly agree that cyberloafing should be allowed and 1 = Strongly disagree
4.4 Organization cyberloafing policies and employee cyberloafing patterns
The respondents surveyed have worked with organizational set-ups which represent
various levels of stringency of organization cyberloafing policies ranging from very
low (OCPS of 0-36) to very high (OCPS of 144-180) (Figure 3). This provides a good
spectrum to understand the effects of organizational cyberloafing policies on the
actual behavioural patterns of cyberloafing.

% of respondents in various levels of stringency of

organization cyberloafing policy

15.1%
22.6% Very low (0-36)
6.5% Moderately low (60-72)
Neutral (72-108)
Moderately high (108-144)
25.8% 30.1%
Very high (144-180)

Figure 3
Results do not show any linear correlation between the time spent cyberloafing and
the stringency of organization policies on cyberloafing. Also, the correlation
coefficient between OCPS and CS was found to be -0.08 which means that there is no
linear correlation between the two which is against the initially proposed hypothesis.
The figure 4 shows that the average CS is between 50 and 85 for various stringency
levels of policy except for the level of „moderately low‟ stringency. This data may not
represent the actual patterns as the number of respondents in this category is only
6.5% of the total respondents. The CS for segment with very high stringency of rules
(144- 180) is expected to be high but is not found to be so. This is because
organizations may officially ban some cyberloafing activities but these websites may
not be actually blocked and employees would still have access to them. Also
organizations need to attach adequate punishments with the indulgence in these
activities to communicate the seriousness of the offence. In conclusion it was found
 that organization policies on cyberloafing in isolation do not influence a person‟s
decision to cyberloaf.

Distribution of average Cyberloafing Score by

Organizational cyberloafing policy score (OCPS)

144-180 66.0
108-144 81.2
OCPS

72-108 82.7
60-72 173.6
0-36 53.0

0.0 50.0 100.0 150.0 200.0

Average Cyberloafing score
Figure 4

5 Limitations of research

Respondents to the survey may have underreported their cyberloafing behaviour as it is

viewed as potentially undesirable work behaviour. As a result, the results may not
correctly represent the true behaviours in the organization. The participants were however
informed that their identity would be kept anonymous, so their likelihood of being honest
was more (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Our sample consisted of MBA students and working
professionals at software jobs who are mostly high on psychological empowerment.
Therefore, it is possible that this population is different from the typical employee. For
instance, other employees may have more fear of powerful others than MBA students
who are hoping to become one of them. Future research should include a more diverse
sample with a higher number of respondents.

6 Implications for researchers and practitioners

Employees in our study reported engaging in the minor form of cyberloafing much more
frequently than engaging in the serious form of cyberloafing. Nearly 90% the participants
reported receiving, checking and sending email quite frequently as well as visiting news
 and financial websites. Less than 10% of the participants reported visiting job-hunting
websites, playing online games, or visiting adult oriented web sites. Thus, the minor
forms of cyberloafing are more typical in organizations than the more serious forms.

Future research should continue to pursue serious cyberloafing as counterproductive work

behaviour and to examine other variables of interest in this area of research. Although the
serious forms of cyberloafing are not common, they are frequent and potentially harmful
enough to warrant further understanding why employees engage in this sort of behaviour
and how it can be discouraged.

7 Conclusion
Cyberloafing as a behaviour element in organization is extremely relevant. This is
because earlier studies have shown that cyberloafing can adversely affect productivity of
an organization and can also be a major factor for increasing cost.
Through this study we conclude that the degree of cyberloafing depends on the type of
employee and her psychological empowerment. If this study can be effectively used by
organizations to redefine jobs and hence increasing the psychological empowerment of
their employees it could subsequently lead to elimination of a major factor which hinders
productivity.
Also it might pay to have a stringent prohibitive policy for inter surfing. This however
comes with the added baggage that employees attach with employers who are perceived
to be authoritative. Hence companies need to be wary about stringent policies as
employees could feel distrusted which could have other negative effects on employee
morale.
8. References

Anandarajan et al., 2004 M. Anandarajan, P. Devine and C. Simmers, A multidimensional

scaling approach to personal web usage in the workplace. In: M. Anandarajan and C.
Simmers, Editors, Personal web usage in the workplace: A guide to effective human resource
management, Information Science Publishing, Hershey, PA (2004).

Belanger and Van Slyke, 2002 F. Belanger and C. Van Slyke, Abuse or learning?,
Communications of the ACM 45 (2002), pp. 64–65. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in
Scopus (12)

Block, 2001 W. Block, Cyberslacking, business ethics and managerial economics, Journal of
Business Ethics 33 (2001), pp. 225–231. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus |
Cited By in Scopus (4)

Fox, M., Phillips, L. Vaidyanathan, G., 2003 Managing Internet Gambling in the Workplace,
First Monday, volume 8, number 4.

Greenfield, D. N., & Davis, R. A. 2002 Lost in cyberspace: The web @ work.
CyberPsychology and Behavior, 5, 347–353.

Greengard, S. 2002 The high cost of cyberslacking. Workforce, 12(December), 22–24.

Griffiths, M. 2003 Internet abuse in the workplace: Issues and concerns for employers and
employment counsellors. Journal of Employment Counselling, 40, 87–96.

Lim, Vivien K.G., 2002 The IT way of loafing on the job: Cyberloafing, neutralizing and
organizational justice. Journal of Organizational Behaviour. Vol23,Issue 5, Aug..

Malachowski, D. 2005 Wasted time at work costing companies billions. Retrieved December
15, 2005.

Mills, J. E., Hu, B., Beldona, S., & Clay, J. 2001 Cyberslacking! A liability issue for wired
workplaces. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 42, 34–47.

Mirchandani and Motwani, 2003 D. Mirchandani and J. Motwani, Reducing Internet abuse in
the workplace, SAM Advanced Management Journal 68 (2003), pp. 22–55.
Oravec, 2002 J.A. Oravec Constructive approaches to Internet recreation in the workplace,
Communications of the ACM 45 (2002), pp. 60–63. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in
Scopus (14)

Siau et al., 2002 K. Siau, F.F. Nah and L. Teng, Acceptable Internet use policy,
Communications of the ACM 45 (2002), pp. 75–79. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in
Scopus (23)

Sipior and Ward, 2002 J.C. Sipior and B.T. Ward, A strategic response to the broad spectrum
of Internet abuse, Information Systems Management 19 (2002), pp. 71–79. Full Text via
CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (6)

Stanton, 2002 J.M. Stanton, Company profile of the frequent Internet user, Communications
of the ACM 45 (2002), pp. 55–59. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (15)

Stewart, E. 2000 Internet acceptable use policies: Navigating the management, legal, and
technical issues. Security Management, 9, 46–52.

Webspy 2004,
http://www.webspy.com/files/articles/WebSpy%20Ltd%20%20Internet%20Use%20Statistics
.pdf
9. SURVEY FORMAT

1. General Information

Personal Information

Gender:

Age:

Do you have prior work experience?

Years of experience:

What was the kind of job that you did in your last organization?

2. Please tick your opinion on the following points related to your work experiences in your last
organization
Strongly Moderately Neutral Moderatel Strongly
disagree disagree y agree agree
The work that I did was important to me
I was confident about my ability to do
my work
I had significant autonomy in
determining how I did my work
My impact on what happened at work
was large
My work activities were personally
meaningful to me
My work was well within the scope of
my abilities
I could decide on my own how to go
about doing my work
I had a great deal of control over what
happened in my work
I really cared about what I did with my
 work
I had mastered the skills necessary for
my work
I had considerable opportunity for
independence and freedom in how I did
my work
My opinion counted in workplace
decision making
The work I did was meaningful to me
I was self-assured about my capabilities
to perform my activities
I had a chance to use personal initiative
in carrying out my work
I had significant influence over what
happened in my work

3. Internet Usage

a) Average number of hours you usually used internet during office hours
b) Average number of hours you usually used internet during office hours for doing non-work
related activities
c) Did your organization have any official policy on non-work related website browsing?
d) Was there any unsaid/implicit policy banning non-work related browsing at your office?
e) Non-work related browsing should be allowed at work

4. Please tick one the three options for each internet activity based on the policies of the
organization you last attended
Banned as per policy Banned implicitly No guidance
Social networking sites
Chatting
Blogging
Non-work email
Trading/Stocks
Pornography
Job hunting
 Downloading music, movies,
etc
News/Sports/General
Online shopping
Online games

5. Please rate each of the following internet activities on your usage while at work in your last
organization. Please choose one option out of the 5 options for each activity
Never Sometimes Often Frequently To a great
deal
Social networking sites
Chatting
Blogging
Non-work email
Trading/Stocks
Pornography
Job hunting
Downloading music, movies, etc
News/Sports/General
Online shopping
Online games

6. Are the following internet usage activities helpful and hence should be allowed by your
organization?
Please choose one option out of the 5 for each activity
Strongly agree Moderately Neutral Moderately Strongly
agree agree agree
Social networking sites
Chatting
Blogging
Non-work email
Trading/Stocks
Pornography
Job hunting
Downloading music, movies, etc
News/Sports/General
Online shopping
Online games