Slashdot Mirror
Quarter of Workers' Time Online Is Personal
sloit writes "Most people spend more than 25 per cent of their time online at work on personal activities.
And 80 per cent of emails sent by volume in the workplace are personal.
Bosses often have no way of tracking Internet activity or policies to define what staff can and cannot do.
Paul Hortop, who reviews company network security for consultancy Voco, said the most common websites visited by personal web surfers were online trading sites, instant messaging/chat services and peer-to-peer sharing sites (allowing movie, music and software sharing)."
This is the correct answer. Salaried employees are hired to do a specific job, not work a particular number of hours. Thus it is at the discretion of the employer to decide whether or not that job is getting accomplished. If an employee manages to work only 2 hours a day but accomplishes more work than his 8-hour/day peers, why would an employer complain?
This aspect of being a salaried employee is actually codified in US law. (See: Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 for "exempt" employees) The law was configured for workers who may end up working odd hours or irregular hours or traveling for their employer. Since the job is much more complex than just "lift this item" or "cut this metal", charging on an hourly basis does not make sense.
Long story short? This is a non-story. If any employer believes that his employees performance is sub-par, he should take it up with the individual employees directly rather than concerning himself with the details of their personal internet surfing.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
R and D
America, Home of the Brave.
Acquantance of mine owns a light manufacturing business. When he first wrote-up his business plan he went to see his bank manager (yeah, no shit Sherlock). This bloke looked at his figures, in particular at the throughput estimates. This is roughly how the conversation went:
(my apologies if any of my manufacturing parlance is off)
The bank manager was spot-on with his prediction too. It doesn't matter if it's on Slashdot or pissing around on the shop floor, employees will always waste time.
I'd bet money the kind of micro-managers that like to complain about this are sneaking onto Yahoo! Finance, to look at their personal stocks, when they think no-one is looking though.
Also, there's a fault with the article:
What if a worker only goes online during their allocated break time? Surely we need an accurate percentage of worker's total time at work is spent on personal Internet surfing. That wouldn't draw enough sensationalist headlines though! :)
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
That's a good point, this study didn't say that 25% of the employee's time was personal, but 25% of their online activity was personal.
Europeans tend to start with at least 4 weeks of vacation time per year, as opposed to the two that us North Americans get.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is why we should be moving towards the Results Only Work Environment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE). Stories like this are based on the workplace as it was 50 years ago, it's a lot different today. Performance should be based on what you get done; Employees shouldn't have to worry if they are 'appearing' busy.