Slashdot Mirror
Web Surfing At Work Can Boost Productivity
An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal reports on a study into productivity and efficiency in the workplace, which found that people who are given a break to surf the web return to their work with 'lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement.' Researchers tested against two other groups; one continued working, and one was given a break that did not involve web browsing. They concluded that 'browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function.' In contrast, dealing with personal email was 'particularly distracting.' In the end, the researchers recommended that employers loosen restrictions on employee web access."
This backs up a similar study out of Australia from a couple years ago.
no shit
That's why we're here. At least, those of us who aren't independently wealthy or basement-dwelling leaches. :)
sig: sauer
After all, no one can tell the difference between surfing the 'Net for fun and me actually doing my job.
I think it is well-known that people are not dumb automata for a while now. In fact, I think "people over process" could apply to a lot more jobs too.
This is trivially true as long as relaxation doesn't mean distraction.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Don't know... been surfing since 9 am (it is 12:15 now) and being Monday don't feel like doing Jack...
A coworker just came by and he started off with famous cliche, "So, are you working hard or hardly working?"
I chuckle.
We stood for the next 30 minutes discussed everything from current political realities in Middle East to the greatest newest phone gadget on a market.
Yup that's how my day goes.
Someone once told me that out of 8 hours we only in reality work like 1. The rest we pretend. I tend to believe that.
As the guy that monitors web traffic for the whole company, I have to believe the enormous amount of time employees spend on FaceBook isn't helping productivity. On the other hand, I am here...
In the country where I grew up, the lunch break was 2 hour long, while the class day was 4 hours in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. So you started school at 8am and finished at 6pm. That's an awful long day for north-american standards (start at 8 something and out before 2:30pm). Yet, I see an identical situation with TFA: when we returned to our class on the afternoon we were rested and had a second peak of productivity, while the kids in north-america have only one and by the time they reach 2pm, they're exhausted.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Biased result - what they should have done was give people a set amount of time work to do, gave them the same amount of money, and then measured the productivity of the two groups. Instead, they put the first group to work for the full 30 minutes and then gave the second group 20 minutes of work, a break to browse the web for 10 minutes, then 10 more minutes of work. A break gives you more productivity on tedious tasks like highlighting every letter 'e' in a Word document? Duh! At least it was done in Singapore so we know no U.S. tax dollars were spent on such an obvious conclusion.
How about people who don't work at all but screw around on the web all day? Giving them the same amount of money for work or no work would answer that question. I know for a fact some people will sit around all day at work commenting on their friends' facebook status, checking twitter, watching Youtube with headphones on, and reading celebrity news. Heck, I've done my fair share of wasting time, too..."Honest boss, I need to check Slashdot all day to...uh...stay current in tech trends!" (to be fair this was back in 2001 when this website was a different place)
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Also, hitting on women at work CAN get you laid. Strangely it also CAN get you fired.
Where does the signature go?
not that i am complaining, as this is exactly how i use slashdot (he said, posting from work), and i think this is true of most other people here
slashdot would materially suffer from a workplace that blocked outside surfing
i would further add that the articles i read on slashdot have benefited me at work, such as with the recent spate of articles covering development on the android: i bring these subjects up in meetings with my coworkers and superiors and employees under me
the web at work is not about porn or gambling sites. unfortunately, that's the only way some management views the issue. you can walk a middle road: black list sites of only a certain nature. for example: block porntube.com, don't block cnn.com
furthermore, if you do have an employee looking at porn or gambling from work, you are dealing with someone whose comfort level with certain kinds of transgressions at work that they are probably transgressing in other ways at work as well. meaning, blocking their web access is not the way to deal with them, and doesn't solve the problem of the other possible transgressions they are probably engaging in, perhaps against the company. keep an eye at them at least, or better yet, terminate them. anyone surfing porn or gambling from work has issues
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can think of a number of times I've gotten stuck on a scripting problem, distracted myself on the web for a couple of minutes, then come back and have had the solution become clear to me. I don't really know why this happens but I suspect it's because I'm willing to dump where I'm at and start over from the beginning to look for the problem. Im not sure how much sense that makes so I'll put it another way: I needed a mental reboot.
I don't personally believe productivity takes any real hit from web broswing. Even if it did, I think the info that is gathered from it can make up or even exceed that gap. I had a boss ding me once for talking to someone on ICQ. A month or two later he needed me to find some info. I knew the dude from ICQ had experience with that particular product and he was kind enough to fill me in. My boss was reasonable enough to take back the comment he made.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)