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)."
the most common websites visited by personal web surfers were online trading sites, instant messaging/chat services and peer-to-peer sharing sites
Cue the collective "You left out slashdot!"
And GBTW!
It's about 100% for me, e.g. I'm at work now
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Everyone reading this article started doing their job?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
People have always found ways to waste time at work, and that's not going to change any time soon. Trying to make it stop will only breed resentment, lower employee morale, and reduce productivity. I frequently take short work breaks to work on personal stuff, especially when I am trying to think through a problem.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
who cares.
If not, fire them.
Chime the horde of corporate apologists and micromanagers pissing in the wind.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Bosses often have no way of tracking Internet activity
Bosses have no way of tracking Internet activity? Maybe they should read the rest of the article...
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)."
Seems like they can track Internet activity pretty well?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I come to work at nine, work straight till 5, and bring lunch in. About 5-10 minutes of every hour are spent checking personal emails, calling my home internet service, calling back the health insurance compan, etc. A lot of stuff can only get done during the day. Plus, a lot of other employees spend 10 minutes every hour outside smoking. Big deal.. my boss knows I don't spend every minute staring at my code, but he also knows that it's important to renew the mind regularly in order to maintain quality.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
... why would anybody care about this? Just make sure the online activities are legal and according to company policies (no porn or hate sites, for example). There is absolutely no need to go beyond that. Let the employees have some downtime.
If you do the work you're supposed to be doing then so far as I can see you're free to do whatever you like with the rest of the time you spend at work.
How about this ... don't pay people for their time anymore. Pay them for what they know or for what they do. Performance based incentive is better than straight salary. Get rid of the attitude that I Mr. big shot employer am your boss as long as you are on the clock. Get a new attitude that you can't control peoples lives by the second. This has most likely gone on from the dawn of employment - now thanks to the internet we can track it by the second. PEACE!
Never Compromise
on my time sheet I record time spent on /. as Job Responsibility Training.
Since dawn of time. Why we talk like cavemen?
I don't code *without* having a browser window open. Sometimes for looking things up that are concerned with work, but more often because I like to take a quick random browse now and then while I ponder something (why are there no easy programming problems when you get decent pay?).
My boss knows, and doesn't care. All that matters is the code required is delivered in a reasonable time.
Sure, not browsing the web for 'personal use' would speed things up, but then I'd be less happy, which would impact work quality.
By my calculation I've been paid £5.30 to read slashdot today.
[turns round to tell boss]
Yup, no problem.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I'm paid to perform a job of work. Not to watch the clock. If something has to be ready for, say, Friday then assuming it's possible I'll get it ready for Friday. In the meantime I might talk to some colleagues, surf the 'net etc. etc. Guess what ? the work gets done.
Managers who think you should be spending every second of the working day "working" are idiots. If that's what you want employ a robot.
Employers who are stuck with this Victorian "factory clock punch" mentality rarely do well as working for them sucks and anyone with half a brain leaves at the earliest opportunity (been there, done that). The ones left usually spend most of their time in a fug of resentment and when forced to perform do so with minimum effort.
Ho hum, another silly management study.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
How about listing the percentage of time on the phone AFTER work that is for work?
Or how about listing the percent of people's free time that is taken by 'overtime'. Or emails from work received in my personal email box.
Or at the VERY least they need to see how much of that 'time spent on line' was done during 9-5 and how much of that 'time spent on line' was during overtime hours.
For many people, it could be 25% spent of online time at work is 'personal', but 90% of that is done in their 9th hour at work. I.E. I really need to be shopping for a birthday present for my wife but the boss needs me here at work, so I'll log on and get something from Amazon while I'm waiting for Joe to call me back with the answer to my question.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Most of my coworkers spend fifteen minutes out of every hour outside smoking. I don't smoke, so why should I work harder than the smokers when I get paid less than they do?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Am the only person who thinks that it's amazing that many workers spend 75% of their on-line time doing work for their company? How much work can you do for your company on the web? I know there are specific jobs which require it, but most workers?
We provide web access for all workers because there's that 10% or 5% of the time they use it where it's actually necessary for the company. We also provide it, sometimes, to improve their quality of life, and reduce the amount of time they spend away from the job on personal stuff.
Doesn't the 25% number seem absurdly low?
I wonder what we'll talk about when he sees me reading this sla...oh shit Ctrl+F4
Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
With the advent of Blackberries, etc more time outside of work hours is given up to work. Therefore during work hours that missing personal time is being made up because there is no other time to do it. I'm not sure why employer's don't get this. You can't magically add more hours to someone's workday
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!
compiling
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
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.
For some, working 4-8 hours straight (depending on when your lunch break is) on an intellectually demanding job is mentally exhausting to the point of being unrealistic. Some people need "personal time" so they don't get burned out, and are much more efficient if they have breaks more often.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
People aren't machines. And if your job is creative, you *need* to turn the switch from time to time to force you to think about something completely different. Otherwise you keep thinking the same way about a problem (tunnel vision), instead of finding a new and better way to solve it. At least, that's what I think.
Now, back to work..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I say this as both a manager and an employee:
The minor loss of potentially productive time described here (25% of some undefined (didn't RTFA) percentage of the user's overall work time) is blown on personal tasks and unofficial communication not explicitly related to work..... and? This doesn't seem even remotely unusual, regardless of the availability of an Internet connection. Aside from those few jobs where contractors and the like bust their ass 12-14 weeks a quarter like in construction work, having an adequate amount of time off in between tasks, I'd say the distraction of socializing with your colleagues and dealing with certain personal matters is often a positive thing. If you're working 9-5 and you present the choice to your boss that you've either got to take an afternoon of leave to deal with your financial matters outside of the office or that you could accomplish two hours from the office via electronic means if he/she wants you to stick around, I'd expect most bosses to just roll with it. If you're working nights under my supervision and you pull up a flash game of Tetris after remedying a server outage that dominated your time and energy so much that you obviously need time to switch gears, you've earned your rewards. If you're working under me and you've got 40 tasks assigned to you and, after working each of them to the point where you want to hit Slashdot, more power to you.
Chew 'em out when it starts to prevent them from getting their tasks completed. Reward those who goof off less, but you must accept a reasonable minimum if you want your employees to be productive, sane, and present. Most people in adequately staffed organizations wouldn't think twice about a person who takes two or three short "coffee breaks" per day or a lawyer/congressman's intern/city councilman's assistant that chews through each days newspaper during work hours. Why should you care if someone CTRL-TABs into Google News or the Wikipedia for an hour a day? Judge your employees by specific goals set ahead of time, in a fair and equitable manner. Don't jerk them around for "misusing" company resources at no cost to the company and for being human enough to need to think about something other than work a couple of times per shift. You'll get more done and have a level of morale that you can't possibly build up by micromanaging people to the extent that the summary implies that you should.
I recently read about a concept called Results-Only Work Environment (or ROWE for short) in a book called Why Work Sucks by Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson. The book is about a programme they implemented at Best Buy's corporate headquarters which lets people only be judged on results, not time.
They did away with schedules, compulsory meetings etc. and it let them weed out people who accomplished nothing, whilst allowing everyone else take control of their own time. In other words, to bring it back to the article, they suggest that ALL time is personal - it doesn't matter how you do it, provided you get what you need to done on time. Staff retention, motivation and productivity went through the roof because of it. Unfortunately most workplaces aren't willing to treat their employees like adults so the idea is not exactly widespread (yet).
This obviously only applies for those complex issues that come up a few times a week... not "what should I have for lunch today".
You obviously have never seen the lunch discussions at my office.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."