Younger Employees Teaching Companies That Personal Surfing Isn't Evil

from the about-time dept

Mon, Jul 13th 2009 11:10am — Mike Masnick

For years we've pointed out how silly it is for companies to use filters and other tools to try (and fail) to block "personal surfing" at work. It's based on the faulty notion that every second you're at work should be focused on work. But offices provide water coolers for a reason, and people take breaks for a reason. Nearly a decade ago, studies started showing that allowing personal surfing at work made employees happier and more productive. A couple years after that a study showed that thanks to modern connectivity at home, those who did personal surfing at work more than made up for it by working at home. And, just a couple months ago a study showed that those who access social networking sites at work tend to be more productive.

It's not hard to figure out why, really. First, allowing for a good balance between the two allows workers to take short mental breaks which allows them to be more fully focused on work when needed. On top of that, they don't have to worry about personal things while at work, but can take care of issues quickly and easily. Finally, and most importantly, many start using social networking and other online tools to help them work. After all, despite what naysayers say, these tools can be very useful in many different jobs.

And yet, more and more companies keep installing filters and trying to block out personal surfing at work, insisting that it must be a bad thing. But it appears that as a younger generation who grew up on this stuff enters the workforce, they're starting to convince companies to change their ways. Younger employees who have to battle internet filters, and even start working from the local coffee shop to avoid corporate filters, and teaching companies that blocking access to useful tools doesn't help things. And, yes, there will always be some people who abuse it, and workplaces can monitor for that. But they can do so by seeing who is not getting their work done, rather than by simply blocking all access to anyone. In the early days of the telephone, some offices banned them, fearing that they would be used for frivolous purposes, rather than work. These days, that's silly. In the future, the idea that we should ban all social networking sites will be seen as equally silly.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: personal surfing, work

21 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

BullJustin (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 11:20am

While I agree...
But they can do so by seeing who is not getting their work done, rather than by simply blocking all access to anyone.
The problem is that this requires a level of management and oversight that infringes upon managers and supervisors desire and ability to offload responsibility onto technology.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- ChrisB (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 11:26am
  
  Re: While I agree...
  My work has in innovative solution. You can look at pretty much any site you want, but everyone can see what anyone else is looking at. Again, crowd-sourcing to the rescue!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Designerfx (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 11:50am
    
    Re: Re: While I agree...
    That's actually kind of cool, I like that. Kind of like a stumbleupon type idea. Can you identify who is looking at what, ceo etc?
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - scarr, 13 Jul 2009 @ 12:10pm
    
    Re: Re: While I agree...
    Does that mean they can see your bank balance (bad) in realtime or just that you visited the bank (not a bad idea)?
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2009 @ 4:05pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: While I agree...
      Or, don't visit your banking website at work.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - ChrisB (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 9:03pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: While I agree...
      You can only see what sites other people are visiting, not specific pages, or what data is being transferred.
      
      I've checked it occasionally, but I haven't seen the CEO looking at anything. (His use may be cloaked ... or I guess he could be working all the time.)
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2009 @ 7:20pm
  
  Re: While I agree...
  Precisely... the managers want to be less productive by forcing their underlings to be less productive too, hence the draconian concept of blocking out all else while at work. Newsflash, noone is capable of accomplishing that while doing technical work (the subconscious mind controls you, not the other way around).
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 11:23am

QFT
"Finally, and most importantly, many start using social networking and other online tools to help them work."

If anyone takes a second to think about it, this makes perfect sense. If I have a question about why an Xperson would submit something that looks like Y, and I know another Xperson, I'd immediately consult with them. We'd have better communication than even asking the original Xperson, since we're likely on the same page (and my Xperson might be able to call BS on the original Xperson's submission.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
JAy., 13 Jul 2009 @ 12:19pm

Internet Access vs. Telephone Access
My wife was in HR for a very large company (single digit Fortune list), and when they first started rolling out internet access to individuals, they had a policy for it (to no one's suprise). Interestly, a collegue of my wife's had the original telephone use policy from when the company had started allowing desktop telephones (way back when).

If you took the telephone policy and replaced the word "telephone" with "internet", it was almost verbatim the "new" internet policy!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- scarr (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 12:22pm
  
  Re: Internet Access vs. Telephone Access
  "No long distance internet usage"?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Scott Horvath, 13 Jul 2009 @ 1:14pm

Wasting Time
If social media sites are going to be blocked then the same organizations might as well block eating lunch, socializing with fellow coworkers, using the phone, and going to the bathroom. I can guarantee that people waste more time doing non-work things using those "services" then they do social media sites.

How many times have you seen someone take a 2 hour lunch break and log it as 30 minutes? Have many times during the day do you see people idly chatting for 15 or 20 minutes about non-work related events? How many times have you taken, or done, personal calls on your phone?

There's more time-wasting potential available in allowing internet access to Google, CNN, and other sites...not just social media. The argument that social media sites increase time wasting is absurd.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
CShockr, 13 Jul 2009 @ 1:17pm

RE: Internet Access
The only things in this world that benefit from Filtering are Cigarettes and Coffee...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
James (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 1:38pm

After all of the techdirt articles talking about the dangers of just surfing anywhere and picling up viral code and other things, this kind of makes me laugh. I do nto block a single site at work for productivity reasons. It is all security based.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
James (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 1:42pm

PCI baby!
"In the future, the idea that we should ban all social networking sites will be seen as equally silly."

Try convincing a PCI auditor that social networking sites are harmless.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2009 @ 2:36pm
  
  Re: PCI baby!
  Yeah PCI sucks.... Because of PCI we MUST block damn near everything. Of course I am the guy in charge of the web filter (websense in this case) so I created an AD group called web-executive and put all the IT Architecture team (my team), officers, managers and directors in it. Thus we have almost 0 filtering with drugs, gambling, and porn pretty much being the only filterd categories. For some reason the PCI auditors bought it and haven't said a word about it. As long as the average user is in the web-standard group (which has almost the same restrictions with the added social networking block) we're cool.
  
  I know... makes no sense, but what are you gonna do. Thanks Enron for PCI and Sox.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
SeanG (profile), 13 Jul 2009 @ 2:28pm

Makes sense to me, depending on your job. I'm at work right now. I'm either frantically busy or twiddling my thumbs. The company can either pay me full time for part time work. Or, I can take these little net breaks and I'm still in the building if I'm needed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bradley Stewart, 13 Jul 2009 @ 4:55pm

In Search Of Excellence
Many years ago I read a book by this title. It dealt with creative practices that large company's employed in relating to it employey's. One story told the story of the author asking the head of the company where the time clocks are?The head of the company said we don't have any time clocks. The auther asked how do you know if people are on time or not? The company's head said everyone comes in on time all the time but if they don't we speak with them. I think if everyone is doing their jobs well a little down time is ok. I must say though I was involved in businesses for almost four decades there are always people that will abuse the privlidges that they are given. When this would happen we would speak with them about this. Usually we were able to work it out.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TJ, 13 Jul 2009 @ 8:00pm

Depends on what's filtered
You always trot out the most easily defended categories when discussing filtering. As someone else touched on, many places that filter do so to block known malicious sites, hacking sites, porn, p2p sharing sites, and other categories with serious security, legal, and/or other liability issues. Many managers are open to reasonable policies, and few places I've seen have draconian, silly levels of filtering. Those that do are usually for specific legal compliance. On the other hand, I recently learned of a company that uses its Websense filter to block access to online mapping sites from company-owned Blackberries, something there was no apparent reason for. So am sure there are some real dummies out there too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Chris H, 13 Jul 2009 @ 8:35pm

They used to block youtube and social networking where I work. One day, youtube just started working. Since I had a friend in on hte IT team, I asked why. He said it was because they now had the bandwidth to support it, so like other people have said, not all decisions are based on a company thinking that people will screw around. Same reason why they unblocked facebook and myspace. They created a company social networking site to foster collabertion and openness, and thought it only fair that we should be able to do the same outside the intranet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matt, 14 Jul 2009 @ 5:09am

You're forgetting the security factor
I'm all for giving the employees an inch, but you cannot deny the security risks posed by the social networking sites. Malware creators aren't stupid, and they know where the easy pickings are. It takes a fairly sophisticated security approach to keep your users (and ultimately your corporate network) safe from the shit that is being drive-by installed from the ads on social networking sites.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
matt, 14 Jul 2009 @ 12:31pm

Web is only part of the challenge..
Full disclosure here: I work for Palo Alto Networks – a security vendor.

One of the things we see is that exerting some level of policy over the use of the web is only part of the picture. Think about the non-work applications that are client server-based. File sharing, media, instant messaging, even some email applications – all of which may not fall into the approved list of applications.

Our customers are constantly amazed at the wide variety of applications that are traversing the network. Some have tried to lock down the network but the user backlash was so great, they upped the pipe and rewrote the application usage policy. The policy blocked bad applications like P2P, external proxies – and allowed IM, Social networking, etc but it was scanned for threats. It is a win-win scenario.

Companies are rapidly realizing that users will find a way to use their favorite apps. Applications are not threats. They do however pose risks. Better to, as the article above says, figure out a way to embrace it but in a secure manner - to the benefit of all employees.

Don’t take my word for it. Hear from one of our customers.
http://blog.paloaltonetworks.com/?p=224

Matt
[ link to this | view in chronology ]