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Negative Effects of Workplace Net Monitoring
Masem writes "Business2.com reports that while many corporations have monitoring tools and restrictions on Internet usages for non-work related activities, these can have negative effects on the productivity of the workplace. The report notes that people have to take days off from work to deal with personal business that could have been done in a few minutes or hours from a work net connection, and that employee morale is generally down when net controls are in place." A related study suggests employees spend more time doing work from home than playing at work.
Another pointy haired boss policy. Treating professionals like children does lead to decreased productivity.
If my workplace ever started filtering /. I'd be fux0r3d.
Trolling is a art,
I think especially as projects get piled on people, the ability to take a break and escape from your projects is of paramount importance. An Internet connection is the water cooler of the future, so to speak.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
If you can do it on the web from work in a few minutes, why would you need to take a day off to do it from home? The web is open 24 hours! Take a few minutes at home to get it done in the evening instead of taking the day off. If you don't have an Internet connection at home, go to the library. That's just ridiculous.
Why does everyone complain when they are expect to actually do work at work. They are not paying you to keep the seat warm.
On another point I say two can play at that game. You want me to work every second I am at work that's fine. But when that clock hits 5:00 I drop everything and leave.
Yes but as I'm at work OUTSIDE OF THE HOURS I'M PAID FOR I figure fairs fair.
That can make a difference. If a company is monitoring and blocks certain web sites, say p0rn, they are rightly to do so. I can not see how that can have a negative impact on a workplace. I can also understand if a company wants to block activity of music share programs, I believe, they are rightly to do so. You are not paying for the bandwidth, they are.
I can also see that if a technology company (for example) blocks sites like slashdot (for example), that could possible be harmful. There seems to be a fine line of the control that is put into place and the up-keep of morale.
There is also a thing call respect and honesty. Yes, somethings can be done faster while at work without net monitoring, but is the company really getting what they are paying for? (that is the worker, and the product s/he produces)
The question is, "Is what I am doing honest towards the company or not?"
Take a look around and see how many office mates make personal phone calls from work.
I've worked with people that made 5-10 personal calls every single day.
Now, take a look at how many services have moved over to the web. Airline reservations, hotel bookings, banking and much more can be done over the web.
I think that companies are really making too big of a deal out of "lost production because of internet usage."
Place the blame where it should be placed - on the employee whos productivity suffers.
As a manager I don't care if my employees surf the web at work. When I assign them a task I have a good idea how long it should take. If Joe Blow always takes longer than expected, I'll fire him, web surfing or not. If Jane Bleep routinely finishes her work ahead of time, I'll make sure she gets the biggest raise, come evaluation time, plus I'll praise her work in the next team meeting, and little could I care if she reads
My last job was like that, but it was a small company. They only cared that the work got done on time, and what you did between the assigning of the work and the turning in of the work was immaterial.
Plus, they also encouraged gaming breaks once a day as stress relief, about a half hour.
That was the most productive company I've worked in, both personally and as a whole.
Government IS the problem.
First it was the phone. Then it was e-mail. Then it was the Internet. Ever since 19th century sweatshops had people reading Bible verses to their employees, management has worried about lost productivity.
The question they fail to ask, though, is: why do people waste part of their eight hour day? Because they don't need eight hours every day to do their jobs. Maybe they need twelve one day and four the next. Maybe they need six months of fourteen hour days and six months off.
I think a larger issue needs to be addressed: do we still need the traditional eight-hour work day? If you're in a reactive job (manning phones or a cash register), I can understand it.
For everyone else, it is just for appearance's sake. "Quick! Look busy!"
Um, weren't these guys one of the original hypemongers of the "new economy," telling us that the way dotcommers ran their business would become The Way? Yeah, I'll be sure to take their business suggestions real seriously. Now, why the hell should an employer have to pay for an employee doing personal things for "a few minutes or hours" (Hours?! Jesus.) when they're supposed to be helping improve the company?
That and the second part about employees doing more work at home than goofing of at work all boil down to one thing: Learn how to manage your friggin' time properly and you won't have to worry about that.
Same thing here, we need SSH and FTP out. So, just ssh tunnel into your home unix box, and surf from there. Also for some unknown reason, Windows Remote Desktop is allowed. So we can also use our windows boxen from home to surf.
And if all else fails, we have http-tunnel, or even a gprs aircard.
I have to agree 100%. I've always told people that spikes in storage and/or spikes in bandwidth usually get my attention automagically.
Have them do something on their system to demonstrate.
My pager then goes off as they begin to understand.
Explain "spam" and what to do with inbound. Outbound is, well, just unacceptable. Other minor guide lines, etc.
I have a secretary that I *know* is instant messaging with her daughter in a far away state. I "monitor" phone bills too and have seen such calls from time to time. Nothing regular and lengthy -- but family *is* part of who you hire. People, we *are* all just people...
I'd rather have her chat when she can. I know when the work isn't getting done. People also know that anybody and everybody wanders the building and may end up looking at your screen at any time. What was the passing game to do 20 years ago in your office? Same problem, different era.
Yeah, I _could_ try and *CONTROL* people and make their will mine. I would also have very hostile employees...
"....employee morale is generally down when net controls are in place."
Administrator morale is generally down when employees are free to download every spyware app known to man, then complain to IT about their Windoze boxes blowing up while they were entering their network passwords into Gator.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Where I work (a 250 bed hospital), every employee who has a desk has a computer which is wired to the network. We also have monitoring software which can and does monitor the outbound traffic. Being one of two network admins (it's a large network) part of my responsability is to make sure that no one ABUSES the priviledge of being able to surf the web. Don't get me wrong, company policy states the usuall "no personal business at work", but it's very loosly enforced. Recently I have been having to more closely monitor the traffic becuse there were a few individuals that were spending most of their time visiting porn sites - some of them nurses. The thing is, everyone jumps to accuse corporate policy about monitoring, but the problem really lies in the few employees that abuse the privilage.
My good sig is in the laundry
It's not that you are using their resources, it's that they are also using your personal resources as well.
Do you submit a bill to your company for your home bandwidth charges when you check your work email at home or when you connect in remotely on your day off? Even if you charge by the hour, what about your computer costs? Electric? Heat and A/C?
So is it also unethical to take time to go to the restroom or get a drink of water?
Seriously most companies have broadband connections, how much bandwidth are you really using?
I agree it can become a problem if that is all you are doing, but how can an employer complain if I get my work done in a timely manner and read up alittle on technology, news, whatever on the side? Arguably it would take longer to do my work if I don't get breaks and I would certainly be much less happy if I couldn't take that time and surf a bit.
The Anti-Blog
- Hire decent, reliable people. (seriously, who can't point to half the people they work with and go, "why were they hired in the first place?") You should be able to tell based on their interview, credentials, past performance, etc, if you are about to hire a responsible person, or a day-trading addict. If you can't, maybe you shouldn't be the one hiring people. Find someone who can.
- Give people work to do, and expect it gets done on time. If you have an employee that CAN piss away 7 hours reading Slashdot, then you should probably "down-size" them. How about assign projects, give them a reasonable time to do it, and let them do it. If they can do the work well, and give themselves some free-time to surf, hey, whatever. If they surf the whole time, and the deadline rolls around and nothing is done or the work is shoddy. "goodbye".
- Check on your employees once in awhile. Do managers just have teams they never talk to? Yes, probably, the manager himself is probably in his office beating off to goatce.sx. How about hire managers that round robin their employees, staying in touch with them, checking on them, helping them. You'll find those idiots that always seem to have Minesweeper on the screen when you walk in, real fast. No need for Big Brother.
You shouldnt be hiring humans if you want robotic fixed patterns of movements and actions. I dont know about everyone else, but very much of the time Im staring off into space or glancing at CNN.com, the problems at hand are bubbling around in my head, imaginging the scenarios out, taking in the big picture of the project... then when I lay hands to keyboard, I do it once, and I do it right. It just seems to me, it should never have to get as far as this elementary school spy bullshit.I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
What is this "timecard" that you speak of?
Salary = No hours, no overtime. Just get the work done.
I get paid the same if I work a 30 hour week or a 70 hour week. If it's the latter, you'll be damn sure that I will be taking many breaks.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
But lets come clean on a silly policy. Intel also for some strange reason blocks sites critical of Intel employment practices. Now, most of these are run by crackpots and are full of misinformation. But why block them? Intel employees are grown up enough to read that stuff. That is a just plain silly policy. Anybody can go home and read them, and then ask the company why they block that -- what do they fear?
Overall though, performance management deals with a lot. I've sat through plenty of Ranking and Rating sessions as a manager. "What did you produce for us last year?" cuts through a lot of crap and deals directly with the productivity issue in a real, bottom-line way.
Except that in many places, salary ends up meaning "We don't have to pay you more when you work overtime, even if state law requires it, cause you'll anger us and lose your job, and you have to be here 50 hours a week ANYWAY, becuase that's part of doing your job."
Gotta do it.. gotta parse those Snort logs and see what's been crossing the wire. At this company, no one cares if you take a break and catch up on the scores, political news, slashdot, etc... but when 19 unique PORN signatures show up (about 250 total hits) for a month, that's out of line. And when your Gnutella habits suck up half the available upstream circuit, you're also out of line. You're paid to work, to complete a set of tasks and move on to the next set. No one denies the occasional break, especially if previous job performance shows good work. But, you're not paid to swap files or check out hentai. Deal with it.
Personally, it depresses me.. I despise the times I have to check the logs, knowing that some coworkers cannot seem to maintain some professionalism, even if they aren't being actively managed at 2am.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
I work from home on weekends sometimes and I surf and do personal stuff at work sometimes. Its a trade-off as far as I'm concerned. If they ever complained or took it away at work then they would see me in at 9 out at 5, right on the dot. I also wouldn't be doing any work at home. They don't trust me then I won't go the extra mile for them.
In the market place today, why would anyone in the IT field work as a direct employee? There is NO such thing as company loyalty to the employee, nor job security. A W2 employee in many cases these days will be let go just as fast as a 1099 or contractor with an "S" corporation. I figure, hey, if the job security is the same, why not work as an indie. contractor...make MUCH more money...and you don't get bored with the same old job forever. Benefits aren't that much to pay for....for a 40 yr old male...medical is only like $3K annually...etc. Like I said...I figure if you're going to have the same job security (none) you might as well make the big $$'s and have fun with it...no more 'salary' for me....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
- Systems repair because some jerk downloaded some pr0n4U.exe file that fucked up his machine
- Systems repair where people fill their hard drives with pr0n, mp3s, warez
- LAN slowdown because people are downloading pr0n, mp3s, warez
The list goes on and on! You know what *I* think of people who do this crap instead of work? Lazy bastards! So do you know what I think of spying on them?
Pointless.
I mean, you knew who did work and who didn't. I don't care what employee A's reason of lack of work was, he wasn't working! He could have been reading highly technical manuals, staring off into space, embracing co-ed frottage at the water cooler, whatever. He/she's a slacker! And not in the good "Bob" way, either. I could have told you that without any bandwidth-stealing monitoring software.
The fact is, if you can't tell how an employee is doing with proof of work... you got bigger problems._
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