Lost productivity due to the internet

I know there was an article in Yahoo News just on this subject. Let me go find it.

here it is:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/lifestyle/personal-internet-use-at-workincreases-productivity/

A new study from the University of Melbourne in Australia apparently flies in the face of conventional wisdom—and many employers’ common sense. According to the study, workers who are allowed to use the [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Internet[/color][/color] for personal reasons during the workday are actually nine percent more productive than workers who don’t. The reason? Perhaps surfing the Internet for pleasure or personal reasons increases worker’s concentration levels or eases anxiety about other parts of their lives, enabling them to concentrate more on their work.

“People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration,” said Dr. Brent Coker from the University of Melbourne’s Department of Management and Marketing, in a statement. “Short and [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]unobtrusive[/COLOR][/COLOR] 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.”

..just as I said. :)
 
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but of course, like I said, some people use the internet as way to justify/make use of ....their time avoiding work.

if they had no internet, they might actually motivate themselves.
 
Rasmus said:
Don't these numbers assume that with facebook and youtube turned off, people would suddenly do nothing but work? I think that is highly unlikely.
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Not sure, but there is some anecdotal evidence of companies that saw a dramatic change once they implemented internet usage monitoring.

The thing is, if most of a company's staff are spending hours a day browsing on the internet they could probably afford to fire some staff.
 
gumboot said:
Not sure, but there is some anecdotal evidence of companies that saw a dramatic change once they implemented internet usage monitoring.

The thing is, if most of a company's staff are spending hours a day browsing on the internet they could probably afford to fire some staff.
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It depends on the nature of the work. My company has a huge flood of work at the end and beginning of every month, but it ebbs in the middle. Somebody did some bad averaging, concluded that there were too many staff, and cut some. Then the end of the month came around and the remaining staff had to cope with way too much work. We ended up with burnt-out, angry staff, badly-done rushed work full of mistakes, plunging morale, and it still cost more money because of the huge amounts of overtime we had to pay. We paid more money for shoddy work and pissed everybody off.

Sometimes you need to allow some waste in order to maintain flexible. I'd rather have a few too many staff than a few too few.
 
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