Slashdot Mirror
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.
You're commenting on this AT WORK.
sulli
RTFJ.
Another pointy haired boss policy. Treating professionals like children does lead to decreased productivity.
I was the porno cop at a 150 employee telecom company a few years ago. Highly paid programmers with tight deadlines turned out to have
At the end of the day, two people left before the ax swung, the sexual harrasment was institutional and only slightly blunted
3% - 5% in any company are going to have some sort of problem and it ought to be dealt with on a performance basis rather than using a squid enforced police state.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Remember, if you comment on this from work you're stealing from your employer. I always take days off to read Slashdot.
The solution that has worked best for me...is to avoid public discussion. -- CmdrTaco
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
...whoops! I guess I should stop monitoring my corporate network. :)
...and he fired me for reading /. on company time. The link is wrong BTW.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
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.
and was in charge of the "web tracking database". Although we blocked porn (about 30k sites) you can never get them all. Part of my duty was to give monthly lists of top porn abusers.
...
I felt like I was peeping, looking at people's web habbits. It was truly the low point of my job. However, the execs (who were given access) thought it was a hoot, and (rumour has it) spent hours snikering over this stuff.
I just noticed none of this is really "on topic"... oh well
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Zero monitoring is done for "performance management"--all that is handled through an employee's management chain. The expectation is that employees get all their work done. If they deliver good work on time, who CARES how much they surf? We treat our employees like adults, and find that the vast majority of them are able to manage their time properly.
Senior management long ago decided to embrace the Internet economy--how hypocritical would it be for Intel to forbid our employees from participating on company time and Internet connectivity?
I eBay online, bank online, read news (and /. too) online, and yes, I'm posting from work. It's a wonderful policy, "reasonable personal use." If in doubt, ask your manager: it's as simple as that.
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.
Hey Mr Boss - if you install this software to spy on us, our productivity will go down.
It will?
Er, yeah - this report says so.
Hmmm... Well, on the basis of it, you'd better continue peer-to-peer filesharing and pr0n surfing then...
Get your own free personal location tracker
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
From: Management
Re: Corporate "watchdog software"
In regard to your comment #5252053, the administration would like to point out that we HAVE found out, and request that you would kindly remove all personal belongings from your cubicle by the end of the day. You can find boxes in the supply room.
Sincerely,
PHB
PS: Don't bother coming in on Monday.
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
In general people cannot properly focus for more than a few hours on one issue without taking a break. If people are going to take breaks anyway why not let them access the net (of course, I don't think they should be accessing porn sites and such from work, but why not Slashdot, etc)?
Of course at this point some programmers will chime in about how they can focus on their code for 12 hours... Save it for someone else. In my experience people who do that tend to write substandard code, because usually the best way to solve a thorny coding issue is to STEP AWAY from the computer (or switch away from the code editor anyway) for a while and let your mind think of other things while it processes the problem. Sitting there beating the problem over the head with more and more brute-force code is not the way to solve it.
I mean, after you fire joe blow.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
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!"
I am the network admin at a small manufacturing company (~300 people, including plant workers). With the ever-increasing number of workstations available to low-skilled workers (especially after hours), there is a great temptation to mess around with the computer when the boss isn't looking. We've had hard drives and RAM stolen (solution), people drawing "creative" wallpaper in MS Paint (solution), and all sorts of other unproductive stuff.
I'd love to be able to trust ALL network users, but unfortunately it is not possible in a manufacturing facility. If this was purely an office setting, then our T1 would be unrestricted.
I hate my job and so why should I care abo^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
/. at work is stealing and might be a violation of the DMCA!
****BOSS NET FILTER ACTIVATED!****
I love my job and want to apologize to the world for stealing company electrons for my own personal use. I am the happiest corporate drone of all time and would like to remind all employees that reading
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
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.
The point of this rant is "trust but verify." I was pretty permissive about what people did, and almost everyone paid that back with respect for my requests. Some hard-line sysadmins I knew were always complaining of problems, and trying desperately to implement technical measures preventing people from (e.g.) shopping during their lunch hours. Consequently their users hated them. I had, and enforced, only one policy, trusting the users to make the best use of their own time. If they had a performance problem it was their manager's problem, not mine, and it was measured by actual work performance, not 'net access logs.
When I ran the network for a 60-person architecture firm, I used to bust people for porn, but nothing else. Every new employee got the same schpiel: "Do what you want with your computer, aside from setting it on fire. See these settings here? They're company-wide. You can change 'em, but they'll be back in the morning. Here's where you make your own custom settings. You can't install anything from your browser, which is for your own security; ask me if you want to install anything else and I'll probably say yes. One thing - no porn."
It worked well, and most people said it was much more lenient than other places they'd worked. The company's policy was "no porn" and I supported it whole-heartedly. I don't care if people watch porn, but doing it at work is (a) nasty and (b) begging for a lawsuit.
I'd bust someone, usually a new hire, about every six months. Some of them did a brilliant job of sanitizing their machines, but they couldn't get to the proxy logs. They'd get a stern talking to by the principals, enough to make most of 'em wet themselves, 'specially when presented with a list of all the sites they visited, and we had no repeat offenders.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
In general people cannot properly focus for more than a few hours on one issue without taking a break... ..usually the best way to solve a thorny coding issue is to STEP AWAY from the computer (or switch away from the code editor anyway) for a while and let your mind think of other things while it processes the problem...
/. ;-) But even if they have a rule against pr0n, I still don't think it's a good idea to have big brother looking over everyone's shoulders. Employees should be entitled to a little bit of privacy, even at work. One of the biggest complaints about my current employer is that they treat everyone like retarded children. They have strict rules about using the net. Basically, if you're caught on the internet you get fired. Of course, everyone who works there is miserable. It would probably do wonders for workplace morale if employers started showing a little more trust in their workers instead of using threats to keep them in line. I cringe every time a manager says "Oh by the way, you're not allowed to do ____, that's a terminable offense." And it doesn't help when then openly violate their own rules all the time.
I agree with everything you said. It's just impossible to focus on work for 8 hours straight, especially one that requires a lot of concentration, like programming. I've found that when I'm coding a difficult problem, I have to step away from the computer for a while and just sit and think about it. Sure, I could come up with some shitty hack on the fly, but in order to do the job right you need breaks every now and then. I guess pr0n should be forbidden at work, but I don't see what's wrong with visiting "family" websites like
Karma: Excellent (In Soviet Russia, karma pimps YOU)
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
The economist George Akerlof modeled the cooperative aspects of the labor market formally in a paper called "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange" ( Quarterly Journal of EconomicsVol. 97, No. 4, pp. 543-569).
I find the view that reading /. or making phone calls at work is "stealing" to be naive and simplistic --- so much depends on subtle (or not so subtle) levels of effort that cannot be measured or coerced. The poster's comments that "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." illustrate this perfectly.
blog-O-rama
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
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.