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You are here: MacNN Forums > Community > MacNN Lounge > Personal internet usage at work

View Poll Results: Is personal internet browsing ok while on the company clock?
Poll Options:
Yes, I'll do what I want, when I want! 5 votes (10.64%)
No, it's not what I'm paid to do and not outlined in my job description. It's stealing! 5 votes (10.64%)
It's ok as long as it doesn't affect performance and my work is done. 37 votes (78.72%)
Voters: 47. You may not vote on this poll
Personal internet usage at work
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KCrosbie
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May 18, 2011, 01:03 PM
 
I got a question for all of you out there. I was actually getting into a discussion with another manager at work about employees spending time on the internet while on the clock. I was saying that if you're on the clock and are doing non-related work activities, then it's as good as stealing from the company in the sense that you're stealing company time. He brought up the point that some employees who get all their work done and can have that luxury which I say is bull shit because there's always other work that needs to be done.

I work as an assistant branch manager at a Credit Union and the reason I bring this up is because I have a personal banker who's on the internet all the time while all the tellers are working their asses off by helping members. It's totally unacceptable that he's on company time and could be helping his fellow peers. I moved his ass over to the teller line permanently so he doesn't get that down time anymore to browse the internet. This is a huge pet peeve of mine and is right up there with tardiness and attendance.

I know depending on where you work, there are a lot of variable factors for justification for personal internet usage such as boosting employee morale, building trust, etc., however, I still can't get over the fact that I'm being paid to do a specific job outlined in my job description. For employees to have that luxury really angers me because there are a ton of unemployed people out there who are dying to find a job right now.

So back to my question: Is it ok for personal internet usage while on the company clock?
( Last edited by KCrosbie; May 18, 2011 at 01:11 PM. )
     
SpaceMonkey
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May 18, 2011, 01:10 PM
 
There is research that indicates that such limitations are counterproductive:
March Madness and the Cost of Distraction : The New Yorker

The basic idea here is that for most people will power is a limited resource: if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, will power is like a muscle: overuse temporarily exhausts it. The implication is that asking people to regulate their behavior without interruption (by, say, never going online at work) may very well make them less focused and less effective.

So what should companies do? They could just remove the temptation entirely and shut down access to most Web sites. After all, if the people in the Copenhagen experiment hadn’t known there was a video they could have been watching, they would presumably have counted the passes just fine. There are companies that try to do this, but it creates a tyrannical work environment, and, besides, the spread of smartphones renders such a policy increasingly unenforceable. A more interesting solution, proposed by the Copenhagen experimenters, would be to create “Internet breaks,” allowing workers to periodically spend a few minutes online. This may sound like a solution straight out of Oscar Wilde, who said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” But it’s actually a logical evolution of one of the great inventions of the twentieth century: the coffee break.
I voted for Option 3.

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MrsLarry
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May 18, 2011, 01:13 PM
 
I'm posting this response from work, ironically, for a bank. (although I work in a back-office setting)

I think as long as your work is all getting done, and quality doesn't suffer, then you should be allowed a reasonable amount of internet for personal reasons. It's not different than standing at the watercooler talking about American Idol for 30 mins.

Edit: I am salaried.
( Last edited by MrsLarry; May 18, 2011 at 01:25 PM. )
     
Dork.
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May 18, 2011, 01:14 PM
 
I am doing it right now

Then again, I am salaried, and am responsible for getting my work done no matter how long it takes. My company also has hourly employees, and they are given much less leeway with regard to Internet use.

I am not on the side of banning or blocking all personal Internet use (especially because taking care of your family and personal affairs is increasingly done online nowadays), but it cannot interfere with your work responsibilities. And if your work responsibilities require you to be on call to customers or associates all the time and leaves you little time to read your E-mail, too bad. (MrsLarry's comparison to the water cooler is particularly apt.)

Note that this is no longer limited to company computing resources: many employees can use the Internet on their own smartphone while at work. I say the same policy still applies.
     
SpaceMonkey
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May 18, 2011, 01:16 PM
 
Yeah, the salaried vs. hourly employee distinction is important as well, I think.

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KCrosbie  (op)
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May 18, 2011, 01:16 PM
 
My thought is this. If you put in an 8 hour day at work, here in California, you're entitled at least 2 paid ten minute breaks and a half hour unpaid lunch. Why can't you use that time to browse?
     
The Final Dakar
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May 18, 2011, 01:18 PM
 
The entire stealing thing reeks of melodrama.
     
KCrosbie  (op)
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May 18, 2011, 01:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by Dork. View Post
I am doing it right now

Then again, I am salaried, and am responsible for getting my work done no matter how long it takes. My company also has hourly employees, and they are given much less leeway with regard to Internet use.
Great point. That's your choice. I like a great work-life balance so I really don't do it at work because I love my time with my family and if I have deadlines, I'm getting that done first.
     
imitchellg5
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May 18, 2011, 01:19 PM
 
With my job, there is absolutely never a time when I can't be doing something work related while I'm on the job, so I don't browse.
     
The Final Dakar
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May 18, 2011, 01:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey View Post
There is research that indicates that such limitations are counterproductive:
March Madness and the Cost of Distraction : The New Yorker

I voted for Option 3.
For some reason that reminds me of this:
Why You Need to Take a Nap at Work - ABC News

I think a large problem is allowing such behavior (Internet usage) is either counterintuitive or goes against ones own ideal of the workplace environ.

Edit: As always, Public poll fail.
     
turtle777
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May 18, 2011, 01:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
If you put in an 8 hour day at work, here in California, you're entitled at least 2 paid ten minute breaks and a half hour unpaid lunch. Why can't you use that time to browse?
Are you crazy ?

The reason I'm surfing many hours per day is because my computer is so slow that everything takes forever, (incl. surfing).

I mean, what else should I do while Lotus Notes takes a 3 min freeze every 20 minutes ?

-t
     
KCrosbie  (op)
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May 18, 2011, 01:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
The entire stealing thing reeks of melodrama.
Look at it from the employer's point of view. Say I hired you to paint my house and you charge by the hour. I'm PAYING you to do this job. If you're doing other personal things than what I hired you for and I'm being charged for it, you damn right you're stealing from me! Granted, it's not on a corporation level of employment, but that doesn't make it any less ok to do it.
     
MacNNUK
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May 18, 2011, 01:29 PM
 
No it's not alright.

The IT department will be recording your internet time, and webpages, whether they deny it or not, and the company WILL use it against you when they want to get rid of you.

Play safe, don't do it.

Also beware of the company INTRANET.

Several workers in the UK were fired for RECEIVING inapropriate emails from outside, and from fellow workers.

If you get a "funny" email from your co-workers, don't open it, delete it.

And if you download a virus from an external website, is it not you to blame ?
( Last edited by MacNNUK; May 18, 2011 at 01:38 PM. )

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May 18, 2011, 01:33 PM
 
As a IT Site Administrator/Coordinator my stance with my users is basic. If its not affecting your work I don't care, its not stealing. Its very rare for a manager or supervisor to ask me to disable some ones internet because its getting in the way of the work. I don't allow my users to use video or radio streaming though to protect network performance. The only real concern I have with my users is viruses. I ask them to limit personal internet usage to trusted sites and to not open links from emails even if its from friends. Thats about it. But I have seen viruses come in from trusted sites so not much I can do about that. Even MacNN's advertising partner was causing infections at one point a year ago.
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The Final Dakar
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May 18, 2011, 01:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
Look at it from the employer's point of view. Say I hired you to paint my house and you charge by the hour. I'm PAYING you to do this job. If you're doing other personal things than what I hired you for and I'm being charged for it, you damn right you're stealing from me!
That's not stealing, that's overcharging.
     
KCrosbie  (op)
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May 18, 2011, 01:43 PM
 
LOL. You're still out money either way you look at it.
     
The Final Dakar
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May 18, 2011, 01:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
LOL. You're still out money either way you look at it.
Well, that's kind of simplistic thinking I expect from someone who calls internet usage "stealing."

How many times do I get caught stealing a pack of post-it notes from work before I get fired?
How many times do I get caught looking at Facebook at work before I get fired?
     
andi*pandi
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May 18, 2011, 01:54 PM
 
According to the company communications policy, the internet is for work only. According to what people do however... I say if you get your work done and stay on "safe" sites, no problem. It is annoying how they block certain image hosting sites completely though.

Wasn't there a poll on this a few weeks ago?
     
Oisín
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May 18, 2011, 02:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
My thought is this. If you put in an 8 hour day at work, here in California, you're entitled at least 2 paid ten minute breaks and a half hour unpaid lunch. Why can't you use that time to browse?
That’s exactly the same amount of breaks we get where I work.

When your job consists of sitting on a chair and looking at a computer screen all day, those three breaks are already not enough, if those are the only times you leave your seat. If you further want to keep all personal actions limited to those breaks, there’ll be no real breaks left. That’s not a good, productive work environment.

A couple of years ago where I work, another department got a new manager who had much the same stance as you seem to have: when you’re at work, you work. Nothing else. Granted, she was a bit more extreme than you (at least I hope so—with her, talking to your colleagues about something not work-related, using the bathroom or going to get a glass of water, for example, was limited to your breaks), but the general stance is the same.

After a few months, it was clear to the management in general that productivity in her department had dropped significantly. Her style of management had created an unpleasant working environment where people felt trapped and unable to manage their own time. Fewer breaks and no time to take your mind off work for a few minutes to recharge meant people were less concentrated and burnt out than before. People also felt that they were being watched, Big Brother-style, which took away their motivation to be concentrated in the first place.

The manager was since moved to another department (still as management, but not as a manager of a department).


Naturally, someone who spends all his time surfing the Internet while at work isn’t a resource. But thinking of every minute spent on the Internet as stealing is a very harmful attitude for a manager to have. It does pretty much no good, but it can cause a lot of harm in the long run. Sometimes (and more than twice in a whole day!), humans need to look away from their work and do something else, just to get their head back on straight.

Those perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes of effective work time that you lose during a whole day are more than compensated for by the sharp increase in concentration and decrease in errors made by people who regularly take a breather.

Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
LOL. You're still out money either way you look at it.
Only if you assume that a painter is able to stand on his feet, brush in hand, painting non-stop without any breaks the whole day (or however many hours he charged you).

People aren’t usually able to do that.
     
-Q-
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May 18, 2011, 02:27 PM
 
I think your categorization as just surfing the internet as "stealing" is erroneous. Do your employees take smoking breaks? Or get up to get a drink/coffee? How is that not "stealing," as well?

You cite the one employee who was obviously taking the situation to an extreme, but wouldn't any non-productive activity have led to that same situation?

I know many fields here in the states have slowly seen a blurring between "work time" and "personal time" due to the expectation of "almost all-time availability" thanks to work-provided mobile devices that give you access to corporate messaging or phone calls. As such, personal usage of the internet has to be expected.

Small perks like that lead to a much more friendly work environment. I know when my boss tried to implement such measures a few jobs ago, along with some restrictive clock watching policies he had a small revolt on his hands, especially when he saw people leaving their blackberrys at the office with the rationale "you want a strict delineation of work time? Then you don't get to interfere with my personal time."
     
The Final Dakar
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May 18, 2011, 02:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by -Q- View Post
I think your categorization as just surfing the internet as "stealing" is erroneous. Do your employees take smoking breaks? Or get up to get a drink/coffee? How is that not "stealing," as well?
Q gets me.
     
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May 18, 2011, 02:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
According to the company communications policy, the internet is for work only. According to what people do however... I say if you get your work done and stay on "safe" sites, no problem. It is annoying how they block certain image hosting sites completely though.
My previous employer had the policy "reasonable amount of personal use during break and lunch times is acceptable." Reasonable was not strictly defined though.
     
jokell82
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May 18, 2011, 02:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
Look at it from the employer's point of view. Say I hired you to paint my house and you charge by the hour. I'm PAYING you to do this job. If you're doing other personal things than what I hired you for and I'm being charged for it, you damn right you're stealing from me! Granted, it's not on a corporation level of employment, but that doesn't make it any less ok to do it.
Same scenario, but instead of charging by the hour you hired someone to have the job completed in X amount of time. As long as it's done by then, what does it matter if other personal things are being done in the mean time?

I think salaried employees are at least a bit more like that scenario, and I'm fine with my employees using the internet every now and then as long as the job gets done on time.

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Jawbone54
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May 18, 2011, 03:53 PM
 
I think it's safe to say that this poll will be quite skewed. All the voters are members to an Internet forum, and most (if not all) of the votes so far have been cast from work.

That being said, as long as your employees remain productive and your company is growing, why not allow them a bit of freedom?

Facebook is an exception. I'd have the site blocked on day one.
     
The Final Dakar
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May 18, 2011, 03:57 PM
 
I think the poll will be skewed because there's only one moderate answer.
     
Waragainstsleep
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May 18, 2011, 03:58 PM
 
You can always look at it from the other angle. If an employee is making or saving you money over and above their salary and getting all their work done, why shouldn't you cut them some slack?

When I worked for an hourly rate, it was my observation that those on salaries were doing a hell of a lot less work for a hell of a lot more money and carried bigger egos as a result. In those situations, its taking the piss to make someone polish the fixtures and fittings just because they don't have any other work to do. Especially since those in charge were not the ones paying anybody else's wages.

If you work for your own company, you have some right to be annoyed if employees are taking liberties with perks or freedoms. If you are a middle manager working for some massive corporation, then pissing off your underlings by cutting off the only things alleviating their mind-numbing soul-destroying jobs for a fleeting moment in between menial tasks is probably going to hurt the productivity figures that should shape your bonus.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Stogieman
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May 18, 2011, 04:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777
I mean, what else should I do while Lotus Notes takes a 3 min freeze every 20 minutes?
Oh good. I'm not the only suffering from using Lotus Notes.

Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
Facebook is an exception. I'd have the site blocked on day one.
YouTube and Facebook are blocked by my employer. No biggie, I just access them from iPhone while I'm at my desk.

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Oisín
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May 18, 2011, 04:22 PM
 
YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, etc. Lots of these types of sites are blocked where I work, too, and I can understand that.

Sometimes they overreact, though: I visited MacNN from work once (it was three in the morning in the middle of a night shift, there was absolutely nothing to do—and I hadn’t brought a book. So MacNN it was!), and the next day I came in and found that MacNN had been blocked. That was a bit over the top. At least I’d brought a book for the second night.

(MacNN has since been unblocked, for whatever reason)
     
Athens
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May 18, 2011, 04:23 PM
 
I can't believe people still user Lotus Notes. The place I work at got bought out by a American company and that was the first thing to get tossed out, no more Lotus back to Outlook.

Side note about most internet blocks, its at the DNS level with a lot of companies using OpenDNS. If your DNS isnt locked out (I lock my users out of it) use 8.8.8.8 to bypass the blocks. Side bonus is most tracking is also done at the DNS level.
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Shaddim
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May 18, 2011, 04:29 PM
 
Screw them, I do what I want!

Okay, I'm retired, but screw them anyway!
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turtle777
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May 18, 2011, 04:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by Stogieman View Post
Oh good. I'm not the only suffering from using Lotus Notes.
*sigh*

It's the biggest f*cking piece of shit I have ever seen on a PC.

My company steals 1 hour of productivity from me every day.
All to save about $100 per year in license fees compared to Outlook. Bunch of retards.

-t
     
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May 18, 2011, 04:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by Shaddim View Post
Screw them, I do what I want!

"One ticket to Washington, please. I have a date with destiny."
     
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May 18, 2011, 04:46 PM
 
We have PC's in our break-room, and some cubes in the office area designated for associates to use when on break. We will get written up if we found on the internet in the wafer fab. Social network sites are not blocked, but for some reason Bejeweld Blitz on FB is blocked. What is really weird is one of the entertainment areas Yahoo is blocked.
45/47
     
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May 18, 2011, 04:53 PM
 
Lotus isn't cheap, its license costs are about the same as Outlook
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SSharon
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May 18, 2011, 05:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
Look at it from the employer's point of view. Say I hired you to paint my house and you charge by the hour. I'm PAYING you to do this job. If you're doing other personal things than what I hired you for and I'm being charged for it, you damn right you're stealing from me! Granted, it's not on a corporation level of employment, but that doesn't make it any less ok to do it.
My guess is that you also want this painter to be available to you and answer your calls during the day. Should they have a no cell phone policy as well?

Personally, I value the flexibility in being able to call my painter whenever I want enough to extend that courtesy to whomever is calling him when he is painting my house. A 30 minute chat with the girlfriend wouldn't be ok, but a few customer calls is fine by me.

Also, I didn't vote in the poll, but I have to use the internet at work. For some tasks I even have to use social networks. Keeping up to date on privacy issues is also part of my job so I check the major tech news sites for related stories often. (I'm salary and I'm the only one doing my job so if I don't do the work it doesn't get done.)
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May 18, 2011, 05:06 PM
 
I'm with Elton John on this. The whole of the Internet* should be taken down for five years, just to see what happens.

(* Except MacNN, the couple of "art" sites I find inspiration from, and of course my email to and from blondes/bankers)
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May 18, 2011, 05:06 PM
 
I work from home, and I am "on the clock" 24 hours a day, so I have to post from work.
     
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May 18, 2011, 05:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by KCrosbie View Post
Look at it from the employer's point of view. Say I hired you to paint my house and you charge by the hour. I'm PAYING you to do this job. If you're doing other personal things than what I hired you for and I'm being charged for it, you damn right you're stealing from me! Granted, it's not on a corporation level of employment, but that doesn't make it any less ok to do it.
Do you expect your painters to paint non-stop for 8 hours, or can they use the bathroom, eat lunch, talk while working, and take breaks?
     
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May 18, 2011, 05:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by MacNNUK View Post
Several workers in the UK were fired for RECEIVING inapropriate emails from outside, and from fellow workers.
Got any links regarding this. AFAIK, in the UK you cannot be fired for receiving an email, even if the email has images of child pornography for example. What you do with said email or attachments is another matter.
     
Kevin Bogues
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May 18, 2011, 05:49 PM
 
I'm a branch manager for a fairly large regional bank so I have experience with exactly around what KCros is saying but all of my employees have extremely limited Internet access (only approve sites, around 20) and cannot really utilize the Internet.
But with cellphones ( all but one of my bankers/tellers have smart phones) it continues to be an issue.

During breaks or lunches I have no issues but the production is vital and Internet access has hindered my employees productivity.

In short, stealing company time, wasting production, lower profitability
     
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May 18, 2011, 05:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
*sigh*

It's the biggest f*cking piece of shit I have ever seen on a PC.

My company steals 1 hour of productivity from me every day.
All to save about $100 per year in license fees compared to Outlook. Bunch of retards.
You should try Open Office. Of course there is a list of VIPs in our company that can still use MS Office. There are some people who enjoy spending their work time finding MS Office files on the file servers, opening them in Open Office and then resaving the files as a .doc or .xls just to see if it still works properly afterwards. Large Excel spreadsheets with stuff like pivot tables or macros are fun !!

Of course I'd never do anything like that. I'm too busy surfing the web.
     
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May 18, 2011, 06:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin Bogues View Post
During breaks or lunches I have no issues but the production is vital and Internet access has hindered my employees productivity.

In short, stealing company time, wasting production, lower profitability
Funny thing is, every single study I’ve ever seen carried out on this issue (and similar issues, like taking many shorter breaks, rather than one or two long breaks, or power-napping, or introducing physical activities in the work place, etc.) has had the exact opposite conclusion: no production is wasted, and profitability does not go down. Quite the contrary.
     
Jawbone54
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May 18, 2011, 06:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
I work from home, and I am "on the clock" 24 hours a day, so I have to post from work.
I'm kind of in the same boat. I get to church every day at 9, stay to 5 (with unique freedoms, granted), but return to the church almost every night of the week (Fridays and Saturdays included) for one reason or another, and often receive calls/texts/emails late into the night (2 AM isn't unusual).

The other day, I ordered materials for the church at home while playing Minecraft. Par for the course.
     
turtle777
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May 18, 2011, 06:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by mattyb View Post
You should try Open Office. Of course there is a list of VIPs in our company that can still use MS Office. There are some people who enjoy spending their work time finding MS Office files on the file servers, opening them in Open Office and then resaving the files as a .doc or .xls just to see if it still works properly afterwards. Large Excel spreadsheets with stuff like pivot tables or macros are fun !!

Of course I'd never do anything like that. I'm too busy surfing the web.
Well, given that I *do* work with Pivot tables and macros, I doubt that they would take MS Office away from me (which would be an absolute nightmare).

I feel your pain though. To replace a good tool with a pile of shit is annoying, especially when all potential savings are lost triple in lower productivity.

-t
     
ghporter
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May 18, 2011, 09:54 PM
 
I voted "No, it's stealing." For a reason.

Unless the work is all (not just mostly) caught up, unless no customers or clients are waiting at all for anything, then time spent surfing is taking potentially profitable time off, like stepping out and not working while you're surfing.

If most people used the Internet that way while at work, nobody would complain. But it is the blatant "I'm not even available to do work" appearance that makes companies establish this kind of rule. By looking like you are ignoring work while surfing, you make your behavior that much less tolerable.

Where I work, half the time I look things up on my phone rather than using a work computer, simply to not look like my research is time wasting. Management has a rule against using the Internet on the job for two reasons: first because you want a health care provider to be paying attention to patients, not YouTube, and second because so many people have proven that they cannot pay enough attention to patients when they have looser access to the Web.
( Last edited by ghporter; May 18, 2011 at 10:00 PM. )

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Salty
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May 19, 2011, 02:50 AM
 
Every boss who has ever accused me of "time stealing" has been inept when it came to actually engaging with employees, and generally customers hated them.

It's one thing to waste time while there is something to do. If I've got a customer in a retail job, then of course I'm not going to use the internet for personal stuff at that point. But if I just finished getting yelled at by some lady who's angry about her phone bill because her son decided to start texting Madagascar, and there's no one waiting behind her and I feel like my head's gonna explode, you'd better believe I'm going to send a text message to a friend telling them how exhausted I am, or read FML for a bit to make me feel better, or check a news story to take my mind off how frustrating people are.

Heck half the time I went on the internet to forget about how horrible the company I worked for was, and how they expected me to work through my breaks when things were buys, and always bitched if I took an extra minute on my lunch, but never said thank you when I came back ten minutes early.

As an employer, you're probably already paying the people who work for you far less money than they're making for your company. I'd recommend you try getting to know your staff instead of trying to control them. It's one thing to weld authority, it's another to do it wisely.

If one employee is always goofing off, then deal with it. But if there is nothing to do, or your employees are exhausted or drained because they've had especially difficult people to deal with, the last thing they need is a boss who has the empathic skills of a dead frog.

I HIGHLY recommend looking into personality profiling systems like Myers Briggs and Enneagram, they'll help you understand your employees who think differently than you. Notice I said differently, and not wrong. Just because your employees have different (and potentially more successful) ways of doing their jobs, doesn't mean that they're wrong for not doing things your way, or living their lives the way you want them to.

Oh ... by the way I quit the cell phone job that I alluded to above. I was their top smartphone sales person for the whole city, and I also handled all of my stores trouble shooting issues when the other reps couldn't figure things out on customer's phones. I had tons of customers who came back to see me and only me. Why did I quit? Because I had a boss that sounds way too much like you.
     
Salty
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May 19, 2011, 03:00 AM
 
Oh, I should also mention. While I worked at one call centre, I wrote random snippets of the book I was working on. I also shared them with fellow coworkers over the company email system. People would read them between calls, often answering the phone after having just finished laughing so they had a smile in their voice.
I was careful not to advertise that I was writing at work, and I avoided mentioning that I was using Google docs to transfer things back and forth from work and home. Incidentally it was probably one of my favourite jobs because despite the fact that the pay sucked, I got to feel like I was doing something other than selling my soul for a pittance, and I got to make other people happy.

You'd probably also find your staff more motivated to help customers if you were nicer to them. People enjoy working in positive working environments, and they work harder when they know that what they do reflects well on a boss they actually care about. Nobody likes a boss who dares call them a thief. It's probably one of the most arrogant things you can do. It's also a good way to make sure that office supplies go missing.
     
mattyb
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May 19, 2011, 04:13 AM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin Bogues View Post
I'm a branch manager for a fairly large regional bank so I have experience with exactly around what KCros is saying but all of my employees have extremely limited Internet access (only approve sites, around 20) and cannot really utilize the Internet.
But with cellphones ( all but one of my bankers/tellers have smart phones) it continues to be an issue.

During breaks or lunches I have no issues but the production is vital and Internet access has hindered my employees productivity.

In short, stealing company time, wasting production, lower profitability
DAMN, did I have a wrong impression about you!
     
Salty
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May 19, 2011, 04:32 AM
 
Stealing company time? I'm sorry, nobody owns my time. My time is part of my unique experience of life and so is yours. No company can own your time. They may contract you for services over a period of time, but they do not OWN your bloody time. The human experience can never be bought and sold at any price. Anyone willing to sell their's does not know what it means to be alive.

(Of course this attitude may be why I'm currently unemployed and working on the sequel to my unsold manuscript. But I've been getting some really good feedback from people in the industry.)
     
Doofy
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May 19, 2011, 04:51 AM
 
Originally Posted by Salty View Post
Of course this attitude may be why I'm currently unemployed and working on the sequel to my unsold manuscript.
That's worth a quote.
Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
 
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