Cyberloafing

Wasting time by chatting with colleagues at work is a time-honored habit as old as water coolers and cigarette breaks. But personal computers provided a powerful new way to waste time at work, thrust to a whole new level by social media, and boosted to dramatic extremes with smart phone power. A recent study found that workers with PCs spend about five hours per week on personal matters, representing significant lost productivity. Among the more startling findings:

Pornography: a 2010 Nielsen study found that 29% of workers have looked at pornography while at work, which suggests that more people are spending time looking at pornography while at work than they are reading about current events. On average, each worker spends 12 minutes and 38 seconds on “adult websites” per session.  

Stunts: According to a study by RescueTime, when Google replaced its home page logo with the playable version of the classic game Pac-Man in 2011, it cost the economy a total of 4,819,352 hours of productivity, which researchers estimated was worth over $120 billion in potential productivity.

Interestingly, time spent on personal emails and instant messages has decreased, probably due to a rise in social media and text messaging as preferred means of interpersonal communication.

Businesses have responded to the widespread cyberloafing by using “spy” software to actively monitor their workers’ Internet use. Fifty percent of all employers report they monitor employees' Internet usage, and 18% of employers have fired an employee for using the Internet for nonwork-related activities. This level of employer monitoring raises some key issues about privacy and responsibility. An overview:

In favor of monitoring:

Businesses have an obligation to maximize profitability, which comes in part from productivity

Workers are paid to work, not to loaf

Monitoring web use helps ensure that employees don’t inadvertently download software that can hurt their system.

Monitoring web use also helps protect businesses from lawsuits that could result from sexual harassment claims, etc.

Against monitoring

Employees have a right to a certain amount of privacy, even at work.

Just as most employers tolerate workers making a reasonable number of personal phone calls at works, they should tolerate a reasonable amount of personal web surfing.

According to a new study published in The Wall Street Journal, web browsing can actually refresh tired workers and enhance their productivity, compared to other activities such as making personal calls, texts or emails, let alone working straight through with no rest at all. Researchers found that workers who had surfed the web for ten minutes were less bored, more engaged, and more productive when they returned to their jobs than workers who had either taken a rest break or engaged in another simple task for ten minutes. The researchers speculated that surfing the web serves a restorative function and the cautioned against over-restricting worker web access.

You Decide

After reviewing the arguments, what is your position on employer monitoring of worker web use? Why? Does your position come from the perspective of the employer or the employee? How would it change if you flipped your perspective?

How much (if any) is a reasonable amount of time spent web surfing at work?

What would be fair consequences for violating limits?