No More Spam

The average employee gets nearly 3,500 pieces of spam—unwanted, unsolicited e-mail messages—each year, costing the company $874 per employee, according to Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus Research. In its report "Spam: The Silent ROI Killer," Nucleus reports that spam filters reduce productivity loss by only 26 percent, and it takes one full-time IT employee per 690 employees to manage spam issues.

Key findings from the study also found that the average employee receives 13.3 spam messages per day and the time spent per person managing spam averages 6.5 minutes per day.

Nucleus found that some employees had such severe spam problems that they invested in desktop filters to combat the problem. Even with desktop filters adjusted to their personal profiles and preferences, these individuals still spent an average of 12.5 minutes per day—nearly twice the average—screening and managing incoming mails, at a cost of $1,625 per year in lost productivity.

—G.J.