Internet
Gambling in
the Workplace – are
you Getting
Addicted?
by Jerry "Jet" Whittaker
January
29, 2006
A survey examining
cyber-addiction in the workplace found that a remarkable
25 percent of employees responded in the affirmative
when asked about whether they indulged in an addictive
Internet activity form workplace. When asked about what
forms of Web activities, they believed were most
addictive, online gambling was rated as the fifth most
addictive activity with eight percent of respondents. It
was only behind shopping, news, pornography, and
auctions. Another survey of personal managers of
companies discloses that seventy-two percent of those
surveyed reported to having dealt with some form of
Internet abuse. Also, 40 percent of companies had
fielded complaints by co-workers about colleagues who
wasted time on the Internet. Among those dismissed from
work, most were dismissed for pornography, however about
eight percent of these complaints were pertaining to
Internet misuse related to gambling and accounted for
two percent of the overall dismissals.
Why Internet Gambling
From Workplace Is A Problem?
Internet access in the
workplace had increased by 17 percent in the year ending
August 2002, with about 46 million American office
workers using the Internet. This expansion, coupled with
a concomitant rise in the use of Internet by employees
for non-related purposes, gives rise to another avenue
for addictive gambling behavior in the workplace.
Addictive gambling is a social evil and can be very
depressing for both the family and individual. If done
from the workplace, it can also lead to the individual’s
dismissal leaving him jobless and may be in debts due to
gambling.
Use of technology for
monitoring or controlling workplace gambling -
Only solution for
controlling inter-net gambling from the workplace is by
using monitoring software. Given that workplace
Internet gambling
is a technology-facilitated behavior, it is inevitable
that solutions to this problem have to be technological
in nature. For improving employee productivity, reducing
legal liability and for enhancing network performance,
businesses have resorted to various Employee Internet
Monitoring (EIM) solutions. These can be used to limit
and/or monitor the access to Internet gambling sites of
the employee.
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