APRIL 21: Here's a common paranoid fantasy, now playing at a company nearyou. Imagine that you're a manager (not a hard task, for many of us). You'vegot a passel of employees; you shower them with regular paychecks, speedyInternet access, even embossed business cards with their names prominentlydisplayed right below the corporate logo; all you ask in return is a solidday's work. And you're not getting it. Turns out these loafers just fritteraway their workday hours, shopping online, emailing friends, playing games,and even checking out porn sites. Instead of honest labor, you're gettingreduced productivity, a drain on network resources, possibly even legalliability (what happens if someone takes offense at questionable materialanother employee has downloaded and displayed on his or her monitor?). Soyou do what any angry, betrayed Big Brother would do: you purchase a pieceof software that monitors your employees' every keystroke and saves thatinformation for later perusal. You're not alone in your actions.According to International Data Corporation, companies shelled out $53million last year on employee-surveillance software alone. Plenty of thesecompanies don't even tell their employees they're being monitored...at leastuntil the transgressors are caught red-handed and fired for inappropriateInternet usage. To some extent, these Orwellian employers have a point.
According to every metric available, daytime Internet use (generallywork-time surfing) is skyrocketing. And plenty of that usage is of apersonal nature, with workaday Netizens pricing Peruvian pottery on eBay,shorting biotech shares at ETrade, and ogling Jennifer Lopez's Oscar outfitat E Online. Which leads to a simple question: with so much workplaceslackery, why isn't productivity dropping? In fact, in the United States atleast, workplace productivity just keeps climbing.
The Department of Labor reported a 3.1 per cent jump in productivity lastyear, after bumps of 2.2 and 2.8 per cent for 1997 and 1998, respectively.It's probably no coincidence that Internet usage has mirrored this greatsurge. Just take a look at 1999's Managing Workplace Technology survey,where roughly half the respondents pointed to the Web as a source ofincreased productivity. Savvy employers could draw a conclusion from thisdata: that monitoring Web activity is counterproductive. Consider theStanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society's recent report,which found that among regular Internet users who hold a job, "the Internethas increased the time they spend working at home without cutting back atthe office" for at least a quarter of them.
Apparently work and personal life are growing ever more intertwined for manyof us. I routinely order groceries online during work hours (sometimes evenwhile sitting in on a less-than-scintillating conference call). FastInternet access at work lets me handle plenty of routine householdtasks-ordering movie tickets, checking airfares-that would take me a lotlonger to accomplish at home, or might even force me to miss time from work.
The hours I save generally get plowed right back into work, which translatesinto increased productivity. Anyway, let's be honest: only robots can beproductive 100 per cent of the time. Humans need downtime to process eventsand replenish their creative juices. In the past, we had water-cooler chat,the three-martini lunch, the aimless contemplation of our navels. Nowworkers of America have Quake III, "Erin Brockovich" movie trailers, and theDancing Hamster page.
Smart employers will chalk it up to the cost of doing business, and move on.At least employees are in the office and staying current withtechnology-making them valuable assets in an information economy. Besides,the best bosses manage employees according to results, not perceivedactivities. They set realistic goals; provide help, tools, and advice;establish checkpoints to monitor progress; and make performance assessmentsbased on the finished product. This approach becomes even more critical withthe upsurge in telecommuting, remote offices, and other novel workarrangements. You simply can't hover over your employees' desks anymore.
Instead, you should treat your staff like adults and establish appropriatemetrics to judge their performance. Some employees may disappoint you, butno decent manager should depend on a Web-usage log to indicate that there'sa problem. Freedom to use the Net at work is also a perk that can improvestaff retention.
Few companies lack Web access these days, but those that fetter theiremployees' access-or routinely demonstrate a lack of trust-will increasinglyfind it hard to attract and keep top talent. Today's e-savvy employees arerightfully sensitive to invasions of their privacy, whether by thegovernment, by telemarketers, or by their bosses. Monitoring employees is agreat way to drive away the best and brightest among them.
I'm not suggesting that companies shouldn't have a Web-use policy, or thatfirms shouldn't feel free to use blocking software to prevent access tocontent-pornography or "hate" sites, say-that don't meet company standards.Companies just need to articulate and publicize their policies to theiremployees. Furthermore, they should be willing to enforce those policiesjust as they would a company policy that existed before the Internet camealong. True, a just-say-no policy toward computer surveillance might allowsome employees to waste time and valuable bandwidth on frivolous daytimepursuits. But in the long run, running espionage games on workers can onlyinspire mistrust and resentment-and that's the real productivity killer.
Steve Fox is Editor, CNET Online
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.