Surf’s Up - Should it Be?

This post was written by Jacob McNulty

Inc. magazine recently published the article “Worried that employees are wasting time on the Web?  Here’s why you shouldn’t crack down” in which the author suggests that web surfing isn’t all that bad.  He makes several good points.

One is that people are often able to get many of their errands done while online.  Wouldn’t you rather have someone do their banking in 15 minutes at their desk rather than have to leave early one day to take care of it?  Another is that web surfing is a mental break for knowledge workers.  Just as manual laborers need a break to rest their bodies, people working with information all day need to give their brain a break.  Web surfing is a great way to achieve that.

On Inc.’s site today there was a feature titled ‘Price Tag for Lost Productivity: $544 Billion‘ in which they estimate that U.S. employers lose about $544 billion because of employee’s downtime.  52% of that downtime goes to surfing the internet and 26% of it goes to socializing with co-workers.

I hope that managers reading these statistics take into account how beneficial web surfing and socializing can be for their employees.  All of the research is out there to say that the vast majority of organizational learning takes place through the networks that people form with each other.  What part of the 26% for socializing is actually helping to strengthen the networks at these companies?  How much time does the 52% for web surfing actually save the company in gained productivity since the person didn’t have to leave to complete their errand?  How many brains are refreshed and ready to work again after a few minutes of mindless surfing or joke emails?

Before the next round of time and motion studies is ordered and before a repeat of the infamous Cerner email, I hope that readers look deeper than the statictics on the surface to realize that these ‘losses in productivity’ may actually cause a much greater gain in producitivty for employers in the long run.

Tags: business training, corporate training, development, employee productivity, learning, learning strategies, organizational learning, professional development, social networking, workforce development