Workers Get Hooked On War News
from the well,-that's-not-a-surpirse dept
I'm not sure if this news is supposed to be in any way surprising, but many workers in the US have spent plenty of "work time" glued to their desk getting news about the war in Iraq. Companies say they're sturggling with how to deal with it. The simple answer, of course, is that they shouldn't deal with people surfing too much at work. They should deal with the real issue: is work getting done? If online news gathering clearly and obviously hurts the business, that's one story, but allowing workers to keep checking the news shows a sense of trust management has in their employees. It also means that employees will more carefully integrate the news into their day, rather than having to abruptly stop whatever they were working on to figure out how to access the news (say at a TV at a pub down the street from the office). This is yet another case where (with the help of filter companies, no doubt), some people are going to confuse issues. If the employee isn't getting their assigned work done, due to too much online news gathering, that's one thing. However, if they're working fine, then having access to the news is an important way for them to be aware of what's happening in the world during these uncertain times.
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the issue
I just ran into this here at my company. Traditionally, our company does not monitor net use, nor does it block websites (except porn). One manager has spoken up about this very issue (ie: lots of people were surfing war news during work) and his point wasn't that work wasn't being done...he freely admits that productivity isn't down and projects are done on time...his point is simply this: If surfing was blocked, MORE work would get done. Basically his reasoning is that if people are meeting deadlines now, well if we weren't allowed to surf, he could "safely" increase our project loads.
Needless to say he isn't very popular.
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Re: the issue
If you are ALREADY doing 4 projects a day, maybe by eliminating surfing, then breaks, shortening the lunch hour, lengthening the workday, etc, maybe management can get 4.7 projects per day out of you. And once they are getting 4.7 projects per day out of you maybe they can squeeze 5.1 projects per day out of you.....This process ( from a MANAGEMENT point of view ) will NEVER stop !!! Only the WORKERS can call a halt to it !!! The UNIONS had a word for this...It was called SPEED-UP !!! Remeber Unions........they had a place way back when.........and they have a place NOW !!!!
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