Three out of five full-time workers have social networking profiles, half say they spend time on their social networking page during the workday and 11 percent spend an hour or more doing so, the survey said.
Among employers, 16 percent said they monitor social networking profiles of employees and 14 percent said they monitor blogs. Also, 32 percent of employers said they monitor e-mails and 16 percent said they monitor instant messaging.
One-third of U.S. employees plan to shop online while at work this holiday season, according to research released Tuesday.
They should be careful, as 20 percent of employers have fired someone for nonwork online activity on the job, and 5 percent have fired someone for holiday shopping online at work, said the survey by CareerBuilder.com, an online jobs site.
The number of employees planning to shop online at work, 32 percent, is up from 29 percent who said so last year, said the survey of more than 3,100 employers and 4,700 workers nationwide.
More than half of workers — 58 percent — say they use the Internet for nonwork activities while at the office, and 21 percent typically spend an hour or more on personal Internet use while at work, it said.
“While employers will take into consideration the overall performance of the employee, smaller staffs and higher productivity demands may have them taking more notice of time spent on nonwork related activities,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.