Merrill Lynch Says No To Having A Personal Life At Work
from the don't-you-dare... dept
Merrill Lynch has announced that, as of tomorrow, their employees will not be able to access any outside email provider, like AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail. It's certainly understandable why they're doing this. There are the legal reasons, of course, where they're being told they need to keep track of all correspondence. There are also the productivity arguments, where they say people shouldn't be doing non-work things at work. I don't think either of these arguments hold too much water. On the legal front, it's simply impossible to track all communications. People will find a way around this, whether it's just talking in person or using some other means to communicate. As for the productivity arguments, I don't buy it either. If someone is abusing their internet access and not getting work done, then go ahead and discipline them. However, simply cutting them off blames everyone for the few bad workers, and tells employees that management just doesn't trust them to do their jobs. If you cultivate an environment where you don't trust your employees not to goof off, your employees will pay you back the favor by goofing off in other ways. Studies have shown that letting employees take care of some personal stuff at work actually pays off greatly, because they spend more time at work and they're more likely to get additional work done at home.
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No Subject Given
Maybe Merryl has a better system, but I bet your right and some renegade IT admin will have it beat before the end of the first day.
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We've been doing this forever
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Besides, I do mention the legal aspect, I just don't think it makes any sense.
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My site does the same thing.
I can see where they are coming from (Merrill) but in the end it makes the empolyees less productive. A break every now and then is good for the employee.
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Re: My site does the same thing.
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Re: My site does the same thing.
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