Web at work: Not YourSpace

Well it is a silly approach. The sane approach is to monitor output of the employees. If the output falls to below acceptable levels they should be gotten rid of, if the output is acceptable does it matter what they do between work spurts?

When someone is on company time, the company has the right to expect them to be addressing company issues. That being said, if the worker had a quick thought that might improve a product, their productivity or be of some use to the company, I'd understand taking some time to search the web for more information even if the idea often is impractical. Instant messaging on company computers? I don't think so unless the only company had a private messenger service that was accessible only to and for company employees. Same goes for private email accounts, either use it on your own time (ie break or lunch) or don't use it at work at all.

Most people my generation and older (38 here) were actually taught a work ethic. Most of us would never even think of surfing the web or checking private email on company time.

Monitoring will become pointless in the near future. As more and more people carry devices that can access the internet directly, without the need for the company network, it will become impossible for companies to track their time spent on-line. Do you think someone with an iPhone with an unlimited data access plan really needs to use the company network to access the internet? Get real.

I worked for one of the nation's oldest banks as an application developer and they made it very difficult to do simple research. Sometimes things can go too far.

As another commenter posted, the better way to handle employees is to monitor the employee's productivity. If it's to expected levels what does it matter the amount of time they spend surfing the net?

I use the Internet many hours daily, though my doing so isn't an issue since I'm retired. even so, I do have a strong view of workers engaging in *any* personal activity on company time.

A couple of contributors here have raised the question, "As long as an acceptable level of work is done, what does it matter what they do with the rest of their time?"

Well, it matters in several ways.

First and foremost, workers are paid to work, not to play solitaire, watch the latest YouTube rage, write e-mails to Grandma, etc. If they finish assigned tasks, they should ask their supervisor if there is something else they might do. After all, "acceptable" is just that -- the lowest-level of acceptability. Work hours are bought and paid for.

Second, if a worker is consistently so proficient he or she routinely completes assigned tasks ahead of schedule, that worker is only improving his chances for a raise and/or promotion by asking how else to help. So, self-interest (or maybe just plain greed) is a factor.

Third are the security issues. Cruising some sites can result in network infections and the like.

Those lead to # 4: costs to the employer to recover from such stuff. I bet employees would scream if they were billed recovery costs incurred because of THEIR surfing. (If it was legitimate surfing, i.e., work-related, then they're off the hook.)

Fifth are the legal issues. Say some below-the-horizon child predator works in an office and in his slack time engages in trying to track down targets for his predatory goals. You can count on victims coming after the company, especially if its a big one. Why sue Joe Blow for a million unrecoverable bucks when the victim can sue the COMPANY for ten million -- and collect??? (I don't think it should be that way, but there it is.)

Lastly are the simple expenses involved: paying for the bandwidth, and paying for the hardware. The bandwidth and hardware belong to the *company,* so it's the right of the company to dictate for what purposes those assets are used. What would *you* do if you went home early one day and found your maid sleeping -- on *your* time??? Even if her work was entirely finished??? I bet you would try to dock her pay.

There are times employers will be lenient. When I was still a university instructor, it rather regularly turned out I had everything -- I mean everything -- done for the day. Since we weren't free to leave -- we had to stay on-campus eight hours -- I would go to my Chairwoman and. first, ask her if there was something I could do. Sometimes she would ask me to do task such as write a sister university. Most of the time, she didn't have anything for me to do. THEN I would ask -- not demand, but ask -- if I could use a computer to check my e-mail and the like, with the understanding I wasn't to boot a colleague or student off. Without exception, she okayed my doing so. And if she later came up with something so sent for me, I dropped whatever I was doing, right then and there.

I'm not boasting; I was *paid* to work. And when there simply wasn't any work to do, given that I couldn't just clock out and go away, my boss was invariably nice about letting me surf the Internet.

I guess we ought to take security cameras out of banks and other public places, huh? After all -- "It's MY business." Well, so's the bank robber's business his -- and the banks', and the cops'.

I just don't get these objections. Would advocates of outlawing this kind of monitoring want to advocate their bosses go to jail if the boss happened to walk in and catch them, oh, playing poker, maybe? On company time?

I don't mean to be impolite, but I've been in analogous situations from a supervisory point of view. Specifically, many years ago, I was a field commander for a private security firm that provide neighborhood patrol services. Officers had fluctuating levels of assigned tasks and answered calls, but sometimes they would have little to do. During that time the standing assignment was to patrol. Two or three times I happened to be roaming the streets myself and chanced upon one of our squad cars, with the patrol officer sound asleep. was I wrong to jump him? I think . . . not.

Why is it the employees always get blamed for this kind of stuff? Often it is the management that either can't keep enough work lined up, or has the employees doing unbelievably dull, repetitive work. Most any employee can be motivated to stay focused. When employers say that want someone who is a motivated self-starter, it generally means they aren't good at that part themselves and don't know how to or don't want to provide a working environment that promotes focus and productivity.

For example, in my last job I was basically doing a long, thorough data entry process with extremely high standards. You'd think it would be interesting because it had to do with the Acceptable Use Policy, but the nature of the violations were intentionally omitted to protect legal interests. It was a name, an address, a phone number, and a bunch of code numbers. I did this faithfully for months. The company would not provide any variety in my work, I had no job-related need to talk to other employees, my recommendations for improvements outside of my job duties were ignored, I had no interaction with customers, wasn't invited to meetings because my job didn't relate to the big issues, etc.

I would frequently run out of work, since everything I did was through about five servers which would crash on a regular basis effectively shutting me down until the problem could be resolved. They never knew if it would take five minutes to fix or five hours. Then when I would ask for something else to do, they would just say be patient. Take a break. The kind of stuff you people are calling "slacking off."

I tended to use this unplanned break time to learn programming so I could automate parts of my job. I was getting work done about 40 times faster as a result. Management said nothing. If I got done with one set of complaints, there would be another deeper well of less important complaints to go into. If I was working at a super-human rate and still got a month behind, these complaints would just get thrown out and I would resume back on schedule. That's how trivial they were.

Well I was eventually let go because the company was moving toward full automation of the position, and even though they would have been happy to give me an excellent reference for my technical abilities, but they couldn't keep me because they weren't convinced of my social ability. I WAS TRAPPED BEHIND MY DESK ALL DAY! HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO SHOW MY SOCIAL SKILLS? THAT WOULD HAVE RUN CONTRARY TO MY JOB DESCRIPTION!!!

Managers need to realise that people are people, not machines. The culture has changed substantially since the days when there was nothing to do in your free time but read. Younger people are conditioned to work a lot faster and don't respond as well to monotonous work as older generations.

You get what you reward. If employees don't get good reviews and better assignments for better work, they won't work as hard. All I got for my hard work was more LOUSY work. And if I would have gotten that last job done 100 times faster than anyone else could have, I would have been trapped there for the rest of my career, because I would be too valuable there to be advanced to a more fulfilling position!

Employers need a reality check. All humans have needs. Even if someone is a "self-starter" and "detail oriented" and otherwise the ideal employee, they won't be for long if those attributes are over taxed and under appreciated.