It depends. On rare days... very, very rare days, there's a decent amount of time to lounge about and chat with my coworkers about non-work related stuff, and even take an actual lunch break. The vast majority of days, however, are insanely packed. My contract hours are 9-5, but most days I get in 1-4 hours early, and/or leave 1-3 hours late. On those crazy days I tend to take a very short lunch break, or, more often than not, skip lunch entirely... sometimes I'll even forgo a potty break. Still, if I'm fortunate enough to work alongside one or more coworkers that day, or part of that day, we frequently chat about non work related things as we work. As for what I do, I'm an entry level research technician at a university in NYC. Gene therapy and all that fun stuff.

Story to illustrate not only what a company can see, but the extent to what they see:

I work in financial services, we obviously deal with SSN and there are many, many, MANY processes in place around security and how to work with client SSN.
Last summer I re-fi'ed my house. I came in early, and scanned the documents my mortgage broker needed, to a PDF and sent it off, encrypted to my broker, via my work email - I purposefully used my work email address because the encryption is better than my gmail account.

About two weeks later, I got an email from corp IT asking why I was sending SSN in PDFS (which are generally unsearchable with standard PDF programs). I explained it was my SSN, why I used the systems on my own time, and they were fine. No harm/no foul. But again, they were able to pull a single SSN off 40 pages of scanned docs.

This is why I don't use my computer for anything I don't want my boss/company to see what I'm doing, nor do I use the corporate Wi-Fi. As crazy as it gets, I'll read WaPo at lunch. We've recently gone to a BYOD policy, and I bought a second iPhone I didn't link to my cloud. Policy says that the company will only wipe the App if something happens to your phone, but prove to me there's no additional monitoring, especially when access to the App explicitly gives them permission to do so.

I spend at least half the day screwing around. Everyone in my department is underutilized and it's basically understood that you should act busy and tell anyone who asks how swamped you are. Fortunately I'm friends with IT so they would tell me if serious internet monitoring was coming down the pike.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work for a very large organisation and probably only do an hour of work a day. It's not for lack of trying as I keep asking for more work but never get given any. I'm mid level and have degrees from good schools. I don't think we'll ever get to a stage where employers can meaningfully monitor what you do on your computer unless you work in a very small office.

You are wrong.

I have an interface I can log into and can see exactly who has been on what website and for how long. I can even see page clicks. I can see if you are doing it from your phone or computer. If you are at home and VPN'd in I can see what you are doing from there.

I agreed with you until you said the phone part, unless it is a company phone, and even then, I am not sure how you could get that information.

Some employers don't care as long as you get your work done and have the proof for it. My boss knows this, and can check on various things at any point to see what I have done. Efficiency shows, some people simply do not have it. If you don't keep Outlook up the entire day, that is just plain stupid. I don't get much e-mail, so there wouldn't be much there to look for.

Most people at the office connect their phones via wifi in order to not chew up their data plans.

I can not only see what is open, but what is active. Keeping outlook open all day is not the best tactic to hide your tracks. I can see exactly what percanrage of time people are clicking and scrolling and actually active.

I mainly use this tool to see who is truly overloaded and needs things taken off their plate and who is just lazy and needs me to pile on the work. If you are belly aching that you are working too many hours then I'm going to run a report and let you know maybe you can find an extra 3hrs a day If you get the hell off Facebook and dcum.

How do you know whose phone it is? Does if report by phone number? I'm referring to people who log in via wifi.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work for a very large organisation and probably only do an hour of work a day. It's not for lack of trying as I keep asking for more work but never get given any. I'm mid level and have degrees from good schools. I don't think we'll ever get to a stage where employers can meaningfully monitor what you do on your computer unless you work in a very small office.

You are wrong.

I have an interface I can log into and can see exactly who has been on what website and for how long. I can even see page clicks. I can see if you are doing it from your phone or computer. If you are at home and VPN'd in I can see what you are doing from there.

I agreed with you until you said the phone part, unless it is a company phone, and even then, I am not sure how you could get that information.

Some employers don't care as long as you get your work done and have the proof for it. My boss knows this, and can check on various things at any point to see what I have done. Efficiency shows, some people simply do not have it. If you don't keep Outlook up the entire day, that is just plain stupid. I don't get much e-mail, so there wouldn't be much there to look for.

Most people at the office connect their phones via wifi in order to not chew up their data plans.

I can not only see what is open, but what is active. Keeping outlook open all day is not the best tactic to hide your tracks. I can see exactly what percanrage of time people are clicking and scrolling and actually active.

I mainly use this tool to see who is truly overloaded and needs things taken off their plate and who is just lazy and needs me to pile on the work. If you are belly aching that you are working too many hours then I'm going to run a report and let you know maybe you can find an extra 3hrs a day If you get the hell off Facebook and dcum.

Anonymous wrote:The people over on the "why don't people respect SAHMs" thread really ought to read all this about how much people mess around at work! Many on that thread are arguing how much more important it is to society that they are in their jobs rather than with their kids.

No one is saying that. That thread is an echo chamber of SAHMS patting each other on the back started by a stir the pot sahm.

Anonymous wrote:I work in a business that is sort of at the nexus of HR, IT, and consulting. A huge shock is coming in the next few years to people who waste hours and hours online. As things continue to be automated, and when we hit the next downturn, those names will be first on the chopping block with no unemployment or severence because they wI'll be let go with cause.

Companies are collecting this info now as a hedge for the future. If you are wasting a lot of time make sure you are doing it on your phone, on your cellular network, and make sure you are still using work applications (like Outlook, word, proprietary programs, etc) at regular intervals. Don't let 15-20 mins of each hour show your computer idle.

Nah, the ability to track this info has been around for years and few companies truly want or need to take advantage of it for the purposes of firing an employee. There are just too many other factors that go into whether an employee is worth keeping around or not that their web surfing habits alone aren't going to be the end all be all.

Also, some employers may very well be tracking the information and then selling it. They really aren't using it track employees to find out how much they are working but rather they are using it to track habits of certain demographics and sell it to other companies.

Anonymous wrote:I'm not even in IT and know they are able to see everything you do on your work computer.

I don't get those who log into their bank information on their work computers or those who order online.

It's my understanding they can see you're on the bank's website but they can't view what is on the page? Same with your brokerage account.

I'm not even in IT and know they are able to see everything you do on your work computer.

I don't get those who log into their bank information on their work computers or those who order online.

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry but employers do not have the manpower nor capability to monitor in any detail what you do on your work computer.

Google keylogger. You can get that type of software for a home PC too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work for a very large organisation and probably only do an hour of work a day. It's not for lack of trying as I keep asking for more work but never get given any. I'm mid level and have degrees from good schools. I don't think we'll ever get to a stage where employers can meaningfully monitor what you do on your computer unless you work in a very small office.

You are wrong.

I have an interface I can log into and can see exactly who has been on what website and for how long. I can even see page clicks. I can see if you are doing it from your phone or computer. If you are at home and VPN'd in I can see what you are doing from there.

I agreed with you until you said the phone part, unless it is a company phone, and even then, I am not sure how you could get that information.

Some employers don't care as long as you get your work done and have the proof for it. My boss knows this, and can check on various things at any point to see what I have done. Efficiency shows, some people simply do not have it. If you don't keep Outlook up the entire day, that is just plain stupid. I don't get much e-mail, so there wouldn't be much there to look for.

Depending on the job and how long I've been at the job. In private sector, it usually took me 2 years to get organized and well planned. After that I only need to work 5-6 hour/day unless there was an emergency. Now I work on a government contract, I put twice the hours and maybe get 1/4 of the things done.

The government is a productivity sink hole.

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry but employers do not have the manpower nor capability to monitor in any detail what you do on your work computer.

Huh? It takes 60 seconds. I login, select a name and a report gets spit out on whomever I've selected. I can even get it in a pie chart that breaks down percentages by website or application. I can see of you spend 10% of your day on Facebook, 4% on amazon, 25% on DCUM, 15% in outlook, and then another 15% on our internal applications. If I see that you are spending and inordinate amount of time on FB, I will selectively block you from going to FB. I will continue to block sites if I have to until I see you spending most of your day working.

Anonymous wrote:I work for a very large organisation and probably only do an hour of work a day. It's not for lack of trying as I keep asking for more work but never get given any. I'm mid level and have degrees from good schools. I don't think we'll ever get to a stage where employers can meaningfully monitor what you do on your computer unless you work in a very small office.

You are wrong.

I have an interface I can log into and can see exactly who has been on what website and for how long. I can even see page clicks. I can see if you are doing it from your phone or computer. If you are at home and VPN'd in I can see what you are doing from there.

I'm sorry but employers do not have the manpower nor capability to monitor in any detail what you do on your work computer.