Holiday shopping is now in full flow, but workers who plan to bargain hunt while on the clock should do so with caution.

Nearly half (48 percent) of chief information officers (CIOs) interviewed by Robert Half Technology in a US surveysaid they block access to online shopping sites; another one-third (34 percent) said they allow access but monitor activity for excessive use.

The CIOs whose companies allow shopping said they expect employees to spend three hours per week, on average, bagging online deals while at work this holiday season.

The survey was developed by Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of information technology (IT) professionals on a project and full-time basis. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on telephone interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from companies across the US with 100 or more employees.

CIOs were asked, “What is your company's policy regarding employees shopping online while at work?” Their responses were:

l Block access to online shopping sites: 48 percent.

l Allow access but monitor for excessive use: 34 percent.

l Allow unrestricted access: 14 percent.

l Other/don't know: four percent.

CIOs whose companies allow access to online shopping sites also asked, “How many hours per week do you think the average employees in your organisation spends shopping online during the holiday season?” The mean response was three hours.

“Many companies monitor computer use, and excessive shopping is a red flag that could put someone's job at risk,” said John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “Even if employers allow online shopping, employees should use good judgment and not abuse the privilege.”

Robert Half Technology offers four tips to shop wisely in cyberspace this holiday season:

1. Know your limits. Some employers permit online shopping, within reason. Know your company's policy, including sites or hours to avoid, before bargain-hunting on the web.

2. Prevent personal information from being ‘shoplifted.' If a holiday offer looks too good to be true, it likely is. Avoid clicking on links or sites that could infect your company's network with phishing attacks or viruses.

3. Buy rather than browse. Your employer may allow online shopping, but not at the expense of your job duties. A liberal computer use policy is not a licence to spend all day filling your shopping cart.

4. Score some deals after work. If you have projects that require immediate attention, save your holiday shopping for the evening or weekend. No online promotion is worth putting your career at risk.

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Do you ever feel swamped by the sheer volume of e-mails you have to cope with every day at work? If so, you are not alone.

Star, a provider of on-demand computing and communication services to UK businesses, has released results from an independent survey, revealing that one in five British workers use up a total of 32 working days a year managing their e-mail.

The 2010 Star E-mail Survey also reveals that 57 percent of workers experience issues or are unable to retrieve an email that is three months old.

More than 1,000 UK workers responded to the survey, which was commissioned by Star to gauge attitudes towards e-mail management in the workplace, and follows estimates that the typical corporate user sends and receives some 110 email messages a day.

The survey discovered that 19 percent of employees spend up to an hour each day managing e-mails, with a further 20 percent spending more than an hour each day, which is the equivalent of 32.5 working days per year.

When asked about the systems they use to manage their inboxes, many workers admitted that they had no rules or filing systems in place to organise messages. The survey found that 42 percent of workers prefer to keep all e-mails in their main inboxes, without creating rules or folders. 11 percent of respondents admitted that they have created dedicated folders but do not often use them, whilst only a small proportion, six percent, had created automated rules to store their emails.

This may explain why almost one in three of UK workers feel they are losing the battle with e-mail. Seventeen percent now feel that their working days revolve around reacting to e-mails, while 14 percent felt that they were drowning in e-mails and unable to deal with them effectively.

Interestingly, the over 55s feel less swamped by e-mail than their younger counterparts; more than half of this age group (54 percent) feel that they are completely in control of their e-mail, compared to just 41 percent of those aged 16 to 34.

Martino Corbelli, marketing director of Star, said: “Although email has been the mainstay of corporate communications for more than a decade, it's clear that workers are increasingly overwhelmed with the volumes and want support with how to stay in control of their inboxes.

“The issue of e-mail management, and particularly e-mail retrieval, is about more than just efficiency and productivity, or even managing stress levels. There are legal requirements stipulating not only the retention and protection of email but also requirements which oblige businesses to make email records available within a given timescale.”

Martino concludes: “It's vital that companies do more to help employees manage this unstructured data, not only to help them feel less swamped by their inboxes, but also to ensure that, should they need to, they could comply with legal obligations to produce email correspondence.”