2.08.2008

Finally Someone Gets It: The Internet Is Not The Enemy Of Productivity

Full article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=311638&source=rss_topic10

Quotes:
Zell's idea is that we've been wasting our time. If cyberloafers get their work done, a little loafing is irrelevant. And if they don't, they should be penalized for not getting their work done, not for what they do online. That's a problem for their managers to address, not something for IT to worry about.

Heck, he probably understands that wasting time at work doesn't require any advanced technology at all.

But the central idea behind content filters, the idea we've bought into and have always sold upstream to management, is that cyberloafing is a costly problem and that by taking away the cyber, we can stop employees from loafing.

I'm new to the term cyberloafing, but the "problem" of people wasting time on the internet is not a problem of IT. It is a problem for management.

Any employee who can spend all day using IM and not have anyone notice for months isn't an internet abuser... it's an underutilized employee.

Any employee surfing the web all day and not doing the job is not doing the job-- an issue for the manager, not the IT department. And honestly, it's a bigger problem if the manager didn't notice until IT told them that work wasn't getting done.

Do you really need to spend thousands of dollars on monitoring software, and dedicate people throughout your organization to reading the reports from the software, or do you just need to tell your managers to get out of the desk chair and out on the floor? Not to keep people off the internet, but to see if they are getting work done.

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