Facebook and Productivity

Why Your Employees Are More Productive When They Facebook at Work
By Dave Johnson | January 13, 2011

Many companies spend gobs of money and effort blocking Web sites like Facebook and YouTube in an attempt to corral employees into working more productivity. For many businesses, the Internet is perceived as little more than a temptation to distraction. Here’s a study that shows that the opposite is true.

A study conducted by the University of Melbourne contends that folks who perform reasonable amounts of Web-based goofing off are actually more productive than people who don’t.

The study featured 300 workers and found that those who spent time surfing the Web were about 9% more productive than those who did not.

How did people use the Internet? Online shopping and reading news were the most popular, with playing online games and watching video on YouTube also ranking very high.

The study makes sense. Using the Web for short bouts of recreation help employees recharge between tasks. Says Dr. Brent Coker, from Melbourne’s Department of Management and Marketing:

“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity.”

The lesson, of course, is that you can get more value from employees by embracing the Web and allowing reasonable use of the Web. And it’ll save you a lot of money on IT costs in the process.

MY THOUGHTS

works if you have mature employees. that means you are a mature employer. if you are able to measure results and make decisions based on those results and a system that would ease out non-performers, why bother blocking the internet? if people have enough meaningful work on their hands and they know you're serious about performance, you think they'll find the time to surf the net even if they want to?

during my brief project with a company, the CEO spent money (and time) blocking facebook, youtube and all other internet sights they can block. nothing happened. nothing changed. people found other ways to cheat on time. the real problem was not the internet.it's not even the employees. nor the lack of job descriptions, performance measures and the like. the problem is the CEO. but that's another story.

as a team leader, i really don't mind if you get to all the sites you can go to. unless of course they are morally incorrect sites. but i will raise hell if my people do that and the performance suffers. pretty soon, they will find they have all the time in the world to go to all the social networking sites.