As expected, the article was a rant about the excesses of email and the
web. The theme was that "employers whether in the Federal Government or
the private sector, are cracking down on the use of computer games,
personal e-mail and recreational Web Surfing...." Reading on, you
discover that the issue really is not the use of the computer for personal
reasons, it is nothing less than the total control of employee's time on
the job. The U.S. Senate has gone so far as to publish legislation
forbidding games on Federal computers. The Times cites vague employer
estimates that employees spend 5 - 10 "wasted hours" on the Web or
answering personal e-mail. Companies are responding with draconian
measures like "Antigame", a software program that searches out games on a
Company network, reading employee mail and keeping track of employee site
visits (even prohibiting non-business site visits on the Web).
The article mentions at the very end that there is virtually no legal
protection for employee privacy in the workplace. However, electronic
monitoring of e-mail and Web site visits has one distinquishing, pernicous
feature: you never know when you are being monitored. That led me to
think about the other great time wasters and what the boss typically does
or does not due about them. For example, why aren't we talking about
software to limit phone calls to only business numbers, blocking out all
others? What about reading material like newspapers and magazines -
should we have the mail room confiscate and destroy all non-business
related publications? And consider how much time is wasted in discussions
- should we bug offices and public areas to monitor time wasted talking to
co-workers about something other than the job. I suppose that would also
include time spent discussing the latest invasion of freedom imposed on
workers by these omniscient new proponents of Taylorism at its best.
For all the bosses out there who found this article interesting and may be
thinking about implementing control strategies, consider the following:
1. What behavior do you want from you employees - mechanistic repetition
of a task or an engaged, thinking approach to work?
2. How often do you expect your workers to sacrifice their "home" time to
work late, or for an extra shift? If "non-work-related Web surfing allows
them to accomplish some home chore, should you not welcome that effort?
3. How do you define work-related? If a chemical engineer is reading a
site about research in animal cell structure, should he be punished? What
if he is looking at living systems as a metaphor for his more recent work?
4. Since many people read news off the Web, should you shut that down as
well? Then why not prohibit the sale or reading of newspapers and
increase the available time?
On reflection, the more any employer feels the need to micromanage the
time of their workers, the less they deserve in the quality of the
workforce. Knowledge workers are today a limited asset, and why should
they work for employers who insist on a nineteenth century sweat shop
mentality? How many of you would want to work in a setting where the
walls were bugged, you were under surveillance at all times, your mail was
opened and read and your outgoing mail was also inspected? I suspect not
many, but that is the moral and functional equivalent of what the Times
suggests is a new business trend, is it not?
Thanks.
Mike.....
Michael A. Gort
Gort@mail.com
(203) 316-9454
--Michael Gort <gort@mail.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>