The battle to control employee access to the Internet is not one that employers will win easily. That is why, perhaps, ImmersiveX, a Mumbai-based Internet design firm, has tried to rewrite the rules of the game. A recent job posting by the company on a youth job portal had an interesting couple of lines. In the Benefits box, the company has added: “Free Internet! No Orkut blocks!”But, will the strategy work? Gautam Ghosh, a human resources consultant, is sceptical. “Open Internet and Orkut use might be a differentiator for attracting people, but the company itself would lose out in the long run if the employees cannot manage how much time they spend on the sites, and if work productivity suffers.”
Digital Inspiration blogger Amit is also quoted on workarounds on how people can get Orkut scraps as rss feeds and updated on Facebook by email :-)
Recent news item I read reported on how the bandwidth of a company came down because too many employees were watching YouTube videos at the same time. Am sure the CIO did not find it funny.
I have to wonder if the CIO who freaked out about his employees watching YouTube on their lunch hours freaked out to the same degree when he found out that those same employees were spending far more time than that working on their BlackBerries from home and at their kid's soccer matches. I suspect not.
ReplyDeleteIt really is incredibly hypocritical of employers to page employees a salary, which means they're paid to get the job done and not work a specified number of hours, and then be upset when they find that those same employees are actually taking breaks and re-charging their mental batteries. The horrors!
If a company has to worry about its not employees not being productive because they are watching too many youtube videos, its the company itself to be blamed for having hiring such kind of people. Also, the more roadblocks you put in keeping people away from these distractions, the more innovative they will become in circumventing these roadblocks. I would guess it will be worthwhile getting these creative innovations channeled to improving the produt/service the company is working on.
ReplyDeleteYes this is very true the blocks don't work as effectively. And also the IT administrators are a little easy going on stuff like GTalk etc.
ReplyDeleteIt's much better to create a atmosphere where the employees are focussed by themselves
Nitin
My 2 dimes
I wonder why it is that people abhor the fact that China and other countries with strong central governments ban their citizens from accessing anything but pre-approved website, but when a company does it, it's called good business.
ReplyDeleteI don't think employees should be spending their time looking at adult content at work, but those employees get caught pretty quickly, and it's up to the employer to discipline them accordingly. Playing Big Brother is a slippery slope of ethical dilemmas.