Flirting, pornography and bad language – how staff use IM

Workers admit to using instant messaging (IM) in the office for sharing pornography, gossiping and flirting, using abusive language and swapping music and video files.

A survey of 200 people at UK companies found firms are risking lawsuits, virus infections and a drop in productivity as staff turn to IM because of the increased monitoring of email and telephone usage in the workplace.

Two-thirds of staff use IM for personal conversation during working hours, with 80 per cent using it to gossip, 40 per cent sharing music and video files, a third flirting and 20 per cent sharing pornography.

The IM airwaves are also being turned blue by the half of workers who admit to using abusive language in messages and insulting customers to other staff members.

More worryingly, however a third of staff admit to inviting the wrong person into a conversation, a mistake that featured strongly in our recent spotlight on silicon.com readers' digital blunders.

Nigel Hawthorn, European marketing director at Blue Coat Systems, which commissioned the research, said not only are there business benefits to legitimate IM usage in the office but completely blocking it is not a practical solution.

"Just like email and web browsing, it needs to be allowed but it also needs to be controlled. The problem is it is a good business tool. However, any tool can be misused. But blocking the application itself is difficult unless the desktop is completely locked down," he said.

Instead, organisations need clear usage policies - as with email and telephone - combined with filtering and logging of IM.

Hawthorn said: "There have to be usage policies that people are aware of. Sometimes people aren't sure what the boundaries are and it can open a company up to legal liability."

He said if network managers are not controlling IM use they are leaving their company open to viruses being downloaded and spread on the network, bandwidth degradation from large audio and video files being swapped, a loss of staff productivity through personal IM use, and the risk of lawsuits from anyone insulted or subject to abusive language via IM.