Workers holiday shopping on the job: study

A shopper holds her purchases as she walks down the street at Herald Square in New York November 24, 2006.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. employees expect to spend nearly two full days shopping online on computers at work this holiday season, according to research released on Wednesday.

One in 10 workers plans to spend more than 30 hours shopping online while at work, according to a survey conducted for ISACA, a nonprofit association of information technology professionals.

Convenience was the reason a third of the workers surveyed said they shop online, while a quarter of them cited boredom, it found.

Many U.S. employees are working longer hours at companies that have cut staffs in the recession and have less time for personal tasks such as holiday shopping, said John Pironti, a member of ISACA and chief information risk strategist for Archer Technologies.

"Because we are asking so much more of employees ... we're finding they're blurring that line between professional and work life on a regular basis," he said.

"What you often hear from people is, 'I need to do this at work. You have to let me do this at work,'" he said.

On average, workers plan to spend 14.4 hours shopping online from work this holiday season, the survey said.

Also, roughly half the workers surveyed said they bank online at work, three in five click on e-mail links that redirect them to shopping sites and one in six click on links from social network sites.

More than one in 10 Americans who use a mobile device such as a BlackBerry or iPhone plan to use it for holiday shopping as well, the survey found.

The survey was based on online polling in September 2009 of 1,210 U.S. consumers and 1,513 IT professionals. It was conducted by M/A/R/C Research and had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)