Clearswift Survey Shows Personal E-Mail Use Threatens Company Productivity.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Many Workers Spend More Than an Hour Every Day E-Mailing Friends Americans Are the Worst Offenders

Almost 40 percent of workers in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States spend an hour or more every day e-mailing their friends and relatives or swapping jokes and other ephemera via the company e-mail system during working hours. The rest spend around half an hour each day. And more than three quarters of people believe their boss would be "unconcerned" if he or she knew about this time-wasting. Only one in 10 workers claims never to use the company e-mail system for personal purposes.

The "E-Mail Use at Work" survey was conducted among 4,500 people in the three countries and shows that company productivity rates could be improved by about seven percent if employees redirected the time they currently spend using the company e-mail system for personal reasons to more productive, company-centered activities.

According to David Guyatt, CEO of Clearswift, the company that conducted the survey, personal e-mail use adds up: "In a typical 100-person company in each of the three countries, for example, the survey shows that almost 1,700 working days each year are lost because people are using corporate e-mail systems for non-company purposes," he said. "That's equivalent to about seven new full-time staff."

The survey highlights some interesting differences between different job titles and nationalities. While IT staff -- at 29 minutes -- spend on average five minutes less each day than non-IT staff on personal e-mail management, these figures cover up some striking national differences:

--American workers, whether working in IT or not, spend the longest on personal e-mail activity, with American non-IT staff spending a whopping 21 days each year on personal e-mailing, the worst of any country.

--IT staff in Germany spend the least personal time, at 12.5 days per year.

--In the United Kingdom, IT departments are the worst behaved, spending nearly 17 days every year chatting online with friends, whereas their non-technical colleagues spend 13 days per year.

--Nearly 30 percent of German IT staff said they never used the company e-mail system for personal reasons. Almost 40 percent of U.S. IT staff claimed to spend an hour or more.

--Nearly one in five of British non-technical employees claimed never to use company systems for private e-mail. Almost half of all American non-IT staff (48.16 percent) said they spent more than an hour on non-company e-mail activity.

--IT staff were the most convinced that their bosses would be unconcerned about the extent of private e-mail use. In each of the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, more than 83 percent of IT professionals claimed this to be the case.

"Using the corporate systems for personal e-mail use is just one of many e-mail abuses faced by the corporate sector," said Guyatt. "Added to other issues such as loss of confidential information, inappropriate e-mail use leads to personal harassment, compliance challenges, spam and viruses. Companies need to set the ground rules with employees on Web and e-mail usage through clear policies to ensure productivity does not suffer.

"Backing this policy up with a technology solution will help ensure it is enforced fairly. For example, using MIMEsweeper for Web, an organization can set unrestricted access times during agreed periods -- such as lunch time or before and after work -- so employees can use their Webmail accounts for personal e-mail, but outside of those times the company preserves work hours for business-related Internet activity by restricting access to specific sites," he said.

"Combined with a content filtering solution on the corporate e-mail servers which checks content, a Web solution such as this can help organizations 'close the loop' and strike a balance between catering to the needs of employees and improving productivity."

About the E-mail Use at Work survey

More than 4,500 people from the United Kingdom, United States and Germany filled this online survey which was conducted by Clearswift in December 2004.

A similar survey was carried out in Australia, Scandinavia and France. To obtain the survey results for these countries, please contact Isabelle Duarte, director of corporate communication at Clearswift, at 44 (0) 118 903 8302.

About Clearswift

Clearswift, The MIMEsweeper(TM) Company, is the world's leading provider of content security software for e-mail and Web. Clearswift secures content and protects against digital attacks by enforcing security policies that increase productivity, reduce IT costs and create a safer business environment.

The Internet is the greatest business tool ever invented, but with it comes a harrowing collection of threats. Protecting against the circulation of inappropriate images and text, spam, breaches of confidentiality and viruses is now mission critical.

Clearswift enables organizations to protect themselves against digital attacks, meet legal and regulatory requirements, implement productivity-saving policies and manage intellectual property passing through their network.

Clearswift's portfolio includes MIMEsweeper, the world's most advanced content security solutions, as well as a range of specialized security solutions for the most security-conscious environments.

Clearswift has 15,000 customers and more than 20 million end users worldwide. It has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Japan and Australia.

Clearswift, MAILsweeper, MIMEsweeper, spamActive and ENTERPRISEsuite are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States, United Kingdom and certain other countries, of Clearswift Limited. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.