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Gloucestershire Business News

UK employees spend more time on 'life admin' during work hours than on lunch breaks

A huge 82% of UK employees admit to regularly conducting menial life tasks whilst 'on the clock'.

In fact, we now spend more time sorting through our life admin during work time each week (25 minutes) than we do on our lunch breaks (20 minutes).

The study into employee behaviour was conducted by UK office technology specialists, Altodigital, to identify the amount of people conducting personal tasks whilst using work equipment, to discover whether employees are aware of the many security risks of doing so - not including being disciplined by their superiors.

The five most common personal tasks conducted at work included:

Visiting the doctors (47%)

Organising finances (47%)

Booking health/beauty appointments (43%)

Organising utilities and other bills (40%)

Looking for and applying for other jobs (40%)

Although it does seem understandable that the busy Brits of 2017 will need to book a doctor's appointment or pay an outstanding water bill while at our desks, many are unaware of the surprising security dangers that accompany these seemingly simple chores.

In reality, there are several security threats that will arise from even innocently ordering your weekly food shop online. Only a small fraction of respondents realised the following security risks were actually true:

Work related security risks:

Storing details in web browser or cache (37%)

Hacking via email (35%)

Other staff members having access to your device (34%)

Printing confidential documents to unsecure printers (28%)

Information saved to photocopier hard drive (22%)

Jas Sura, security team lead at Altodigital, said: "Although it may seem like simply ordering a new outfit for the weekend and quickly transferring some money to a friend is a quick and easy task, it may introduce problems further down the line.

"Site login and bank details may be stored automatically onto your device, meaning that if other staff members have access to it, or you leave your laptop unlocked while you are away from your desk, it could be a confidentiality disaster waiting to happen.

"The explosion in growth of cyber hacking, in both capability and frequency, has caught short businesses of all sizes because it is so easy to do at a basic level.

"Hacking methods are becoming more and more sophisticated at times capable of fooling more tech-savvy individuals. Our recent research revealed that 18% of UK SMEs have been hacked in the last 12 months."

Punchline says:

The people who are supposed to be monitoring it and managing their staff are the business owners who are probably doing it themselves. You've got to have a lot of self-control if you are the boss.

What do you think? Email mark@moosemarketingandpr.co.uk

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