Why go to the mall when you can shop at work?

Working and shopping have traditionally meant two separate activities. Now, thanks to the Internet, employees can shop till they drop without ever leaving their desks.

With a few clicks of a mouse – keeping one eye on the electronic order form, the other on the boss – workers are checking holiday gifts off their lists. That leaves managers pondering a sticky question: How much e-commerce – if any – is permissible on the job?

"This time of year, it's the greatest abuse of online activities," says Jennifer Berman, managing director of CBIZ Human Capital Services in Chicago. "A lot of employers do try to be reasonable. They understand people are strapped for time."

Nearly one-third of workers use their computers at work to shop online, according to a new Spherion survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Many are also shopping faster. Nearly half spend less than 15 minutes each time they make a seasonal purchase at work. Those between the ages of 25 and 29 are most likely to be cyberbuyers on the job.

As one measure of the popularity of workplace shopping, on "Cyber Monday" after Thanksgiving, 32.5 million buyers spent a record $733 million shopping online. Sixty percent of the money they spent flowed from workplace computers.

That day Bill Wiseley, a partner at Ready to Hire, an online staffing service in Willow Grove, Pa., even brought in lunch for his 25 employees so they could spend their full lunch hour shopping. He places online shopping in a category with personal phone calls and personal e-mail.

"As long as it's within our established boundaries, we have no problem with it," Mr. Wiseley says. "We really feel our employees are giving 110 percent. We're not averse to 15 minutes a day for a few days [during the holidays] to do some online shopping. Then their mind-set will be fully dedicated to their workload."

Yet more than half of human-resources professionals have had to discipline their staff for wasting time on the Internet, according to a survey by Clearswift, a high-tech security company headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. Although nearly 90 percent of these companies say they have a written policy on Internet use, far fewer have ways to enforce the policy.

Wiseley, who maintains ethical and professional guidelines for Internet use, relies on security tools to monitor all Internet activity. "I get reports weekly about our employees' Web activity," he says.

One owner of a public-relations firm in the Northwest learned the hard way about the importance of having an Internet policy. Last week, she discovered that her assistant frequently shops online. She also spends time on MySpace and other social-networking sites, as well as on video games and music sites.

"I feel rather devastated," says the owner, who requested anonymity because she has not yet confronted her employee. "I was grooming her for a great position. Now I don't know what to do."

Her discovery came when the firm that monitors her computers for viruses noticed significant online activity and notified her.

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