News You Can Use: Nearly one-third of workers do holiday shopping online at work

Nearly one-third (29%) of workers do holiday shopping online during work hours, states new data from CareerBuilder.com. In addition, only half of employers will monitor Internet use of employees, potentially setting the stage for even more lost productivity in an already-crunched Q4. "While employers are unlikely to terminate workers for online holiday shopping during the workday, employees should proactively police their personal Internet usage," said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources for CareerBuilder.com. "In addition, employees need to be aware of company Internet policies, as more than a quarter of employers surveyed monitor workers' time spent online and sites visited."

Of those who plan to holiday shop online this season while at work, 43% of workers anticipate they will spend more than one hour, 23% said they will spend two hours or more and 13% will spend three hours or more.

According to the survey, workers also use the Internet for the following non-work related purposes:

Research. 61% of workers use the Internet for non-work related research and activities while they are at work. Among these workers, 37% said they spend an average of more than 30 minutes of their workday on non-work related online activities and 18% said they spend an average of an hour or more.

E-mail. 20% of workers send six or more non-work related e-mails per day. Among this group, 22% spend more than 30 minutes during the typical workday doing so.

Blogging. 9% of workers surveyed have a personal blog, and while nearly a quarter (23%) of them spend time blogging at work, only 9% of them spend 15 minutes or more blogging during the typical workday.

Social Networking. 41% of workers surveyed have a MySpace, Facebook or other social networking page. More than one-third (35%) of them spend time on their social networking page during the workday with 8% spending 30 minutes or more.

Instant Messaging: 20% of workers use instant messenger at least once a week.

More than 5,600 U.S. workers and more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals participated in this survey, conducted between August and September.