Techies whirl away hours watching porn

By Ankita Bhalani   |   Wednesday, 10 December 2008, 19:37 IST   |    16 Comments
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Techies whirl away hours watching porn
Bangalore: The Indian IT industry has witnessed increasing instances of porn viewing at the workplaces as employees while away their working hours visiting pornography or social networking sites. The employees' viewership of porn sites at their office hours has shown an increase of 23 percent compared to last year, as per a report by Newsweek. The trend has resulted in considerable increase of employees' ending up facing termination orders. A Chief Operating Officer of a business intelligence company said, "While I was working at iGate, one of the employees was terminated after being caught viewing pornography site." Many other IT workers confirm the existence of employees viewing porn sites during working hours. Some spending their whole lunch hours or breaks in surfing these sites, said another software engineer. There was also a high possibility that the employees who come early and work late hook on more than the rest. While, others deny any such incidents or terminations, refusing to acknowledge the unauthorized increase in this trend, that has crept in the IT industry. It could be because neither the individual nor the company wants to reveal it as it will damage the person's professional career and the company's market value. An employee of Wipro under anonymity said, "One of my colleagues was fired under the pretext of underperformance while the actual reason was that he had been caught viewing porn." However, as the number of such incidents is on high, more and more companies are opting for tools and software - to block any access to some irrelevant websites that may create an unpleasant environment or diminished productivity as it has almost become a necessity to keep up the credibility factor. The companies consider it a loss in terms of its productivity, creativity, employer profitability and time. Moreover, it could also create hostile working environment and can be regarded as sexual harassment in reference to Civil Rights Act. This could raise a legal question on the company's reputation also.