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.
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.
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.
I was told the same, except it was 3 hours instead of 1. It was my previous supervisor so they may have been trying to get 3x the productivity out of me.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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)
The thing about the earlier poster is that he probably is paid to be available. I know currently in my job, there is not a whole lot to be done so I have a lot of free time to kill (believe me I personally would much rather have meaningful work to do or not have to come in. They keep paying me for one simple reason, my services are valuable and they get a good deal on them by keeping me salaried. If I was a consultant, I would cost the company I work for a good 4 times more than I currently do. If they find my services valuable and keep me busy even 1/4 of the time, then they are making out on the deal. In exchange, I don't have to worry about the stress of trying to find work all the time and occasionally may be busy far more than 1/4 of the time. It balances out overall, but the whole idea behind salaried work is that you are paid to retain your skills, not for hours worked.
AJ Henderson