Working from home undoubtedly presents its own set of challenges - resisting the urge to shop online or meander into the kitchen every 20 minutes expecting a new snack to magically appear are among my personal foibles.
But according to new research, browsing Twitter or catching up on the daily news are not the only activities people are sneakily enjoying during their working hours. The findings of a new survey by IT support company Totality Services has found people are using their work devices, including phones and laptops, for a wide variety of non-work-related activities.
The team asked 2000 Brits what they really use their work devices for - and the results are pretty shocking.
Based on the research, around 17 percent of people use their work devices to browse social media, while 15 percent said they will use their phone or laptop to message and communicate with friends.
However, a staggering 5 percent of participants (100 people) admitted that away from the prying eyes of their coworkers, they are using their devices to watch porn - that 5 percent is the equivalent of roughly 3 million workers in the UK. Looks like some people must be misinterpreting NSFW as 'no, seriously, fap whenever'.
On a local scale, there are 2,750,000 employed people in New Zealand, according to the latest statistics. If every single one of these people had a work laptop or phone, proportionately, 137,500 would be using their device to watch adult content.
Additionally, the survey found around a third of those who watch porn on company time do so for two to four hours of their workday. A further 20 percent admitted to watching adult content for a staggering four to eight hours in a day.
Another concerning result found a number of participants had confessed to gambling on the job, with 75 percent gambling for up to four hours a day.
"Like most things, if people are willing to try it, there is often a way to get around security protocols if you have that knowledge," Luis Navarro, the co-founder of Totality Services, told the Mirror.
"However, for diligent companies, it's about making sure those basic security protocols are in place, so you're doing your utmost to prevent them from happening in the first place.
"Employees can always try and login into a VPN server to disguise their browsing, but a lot of these software programmes usually block this type of behaviour, and it will create a log on the admin side of the platform, so if you did happen to try and access something inappropriate, that is going to be logged and flagged somewhere."
So maybe, you know, just use your own personal device.
