You’ll be shocked—shocked!—to learn that employees use instant messaging for personal conversations. You’ll be equally shocked to learn that employees stop in the hallways for personal conversations.

This time around, it’s the Meta Group that has released a survey that shows 57% of the respondents from 300 organizations “admitted” using IM at work for personal reasons. Did they really admit they use IM for non-work purposes? Or did they shrug and say, “Well, yeah, of course I do.” The survey also found that 56% of the participants also use their home IM capabilities to do work.

If that sounds like a wash to you, Meta Group analyst Ted Tzrimis thinks it’s “alarming:”

Companies are exposed to potential problems on both fronts, when people are trading work for private conversations in the office, and when they are using IM for business outside the control of their employers.

Tzrimis is concerned that employees could do something “seedy” from home, like send dirty pictures to a co-worker, which reflects poorly on the company even if it’s not illegal. Of course, the study also showed 35% of companies have no policies in place regarding IM. Further, many organizations fail to acknowledge that IM has become as useful and common a communication tool as the telephone. While only 3% of companies prohibit the use of the phone for personal use, 16% ban the personal use of IM. And while 68% of companies have policies that permit limited personal use of e-mail, only 44% had a similar rule for IM.

The notion that companies should—or can—“control” employee messaging should be dropped. Messaging channels need policies and guidelines that acknowledge the reality of work-life integration, which suggests that employees expected to put in long hours and take work home should also be allowed to live some of their life at work. (It also suggests that work-life balance is unattainable.) Productivity is measured in output and time-to-market, not hours spent in the office on non-work-related activities.

Techweb has the study results.