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Connectivity and Productivity: The Web Giveth, the Web Taketh Away
by
findingDulcinea Staff
While software engineers look to online games for new ways to organize the workplace, the Internet’s myriad routes to procrastination can still sap productivity.
30-Second Summary
Consultants, such as Karen E. Klein at Business Week, generally advise bosses not to fret about workers enjoying a little time-out on the Web every day.
Klein argues that surfing at the office is a fair price to pay for the productivity gains seen since Internet access became nearly universal.
But there are other voices in this debate taking more extreme and polarized views: the Web evangelists and the Net skeptics.
Among the former are Entellium and Seriosity, companies marketing office software that actually draws inspiration from online games, such as "World of Warcraft," which are supposedly so distracting to workers.
In the opposite camp are figures such as management consultant Ken Seigel, an avowed enemy of perpetual connectivity. He told The Christian Science Monitor that e-mail has become “the perfect way to avoid solving problems.” Seigel encourages bosses to observe a “no e-mail Friday” in the office.
Net skeptic Andrew O’Hagan, a British novelist, goes even further. For O’Hagan, e-mail and cell phones have become a regrettable existential necessity for the modern individual.
As O’Hagan puts it, the philosophy behind compulsive e-mailing and browsing is "I’m available, therefore I am.”
Klein argues that surfing at the office is a fair price to pay for the productivity gains seen since Internet access became nearly universal.
But there are other voices in this debate taking more extreme and polarized views: the Web evangelists and the Net skeptics.
Among the former are Entellium and Seriosity, companies marketing office software that actually draws inspiration from online games, such as "World of Warcraft," which are supposedly so distracting to workers.
In the opposite camp are figures such as management consultant Ken Seigel, an avowed enemy of perpetual connectivity. He told The Christian Science Monitor that e-mail has become “the perfect way to avoid solving problems.” Seigel encourages bosses to observe a “no e-mail Friday” in the office.
Net skeptic Andrew O’Hagan, a British novelist, goes even further. For O’Hagan, e-mail and cell phones have become a regrettable existential necessity for the modern individual.
As O’Hagan puts it, the philosophy behind compulsive e-mailing and browsing is "I’m available, therefore I am.”
Headline Links: The Internet evangelists
Management consultants and employers are looking for ways to harness the skills developed in online team games, such as World of Warcraft, for use in the workplace. To that end, Dr. Byron Reeves of Stanford University founded Seriosity, which has worked with five or six Fortune 500 companies to harness the skills honed by those game mechanics, according to the BBC.
Source: The BBC
Entellium produces software that shows employees how they are performing in the context of their own goals and the output of their colleagues; Seriosity has produced e-mail software called Attent that creates a virtual currency spent when e-mails are sent. Attent is designed to cut down on excessive intra-office communications. Both companies found inspiration from Internet gaming and are profiled by The New York Times.
Source: The New York Times
Opinion & Analysis: Web caution to Web skepticism
Exercise caution
The multitasking that modern online technology makes possible is best curbed by the responsible employee, according to this New York Times report of May 2007. The Times covers research that draws some simple conclusions about Internet use: “Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions—most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows—hamper performance.”
Source: The New York Times
“Most entrepreneurs find that their employees’ productivity has increased since they shifted major business functions online,” writes Business Week magazine. A smart employer will have “built in some tolerance” for personal computer use, which is only fair considering how technology has also led to employees doing more work outside of office hours, writes journalist Karen E. Klein. The key is to limit that personal computer time, just as you would personal phone calls, Klein advises a concerned reader.
Source: Business Week
The Associated Press looked into the issue of Web use in the workplace and, like Business Week, concluded that some online time should be permitted each day. In fact, according to the AP, a blanket ban on Internet use in the office can be counterproductive, as it diminishes morale and prevents employees from resolving problems, such as arranging childcare, that are unavoidable and distract from work.
Source: The New York Times
No tolerance
In an article titled “Workplace Web use: Give ’em an inch …,” Douglas Schweitzer argues that “statistics show that worldwide corporations lose billions” from reduced productivity as a result of the under-the-radar Web use that goes on in the office. But “far more frightening,” writes Schweitzer, “than even the loss of productivity and revenue from Internet misuse” is the legal liability of employers when members of the workforce download inappropriate or offensive material.
Source: SearchSAP.com
Management consultant Ken Siegel believes that e-mail has become “the perfect way to avoid solving problems,” writes The Christian Science Monitor. He is promoting the “no e-mail Friday” adopted by a number of businesses in the Los Angeles area, arguing that escaping from endless e-mail is a positive boost to the workplace.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
“Everybody who really understands the Blackberry calls it a Crackberry,” writes British novelist Andrew O’Hagan, “which underestimates its addictive properties. At least with crack you get to tilt your head back between puffs, or so my mother tells me.” O’Hagan presents a humorous take on our culture of non-stop availability, reasoning that once “your average working stiff was always looking for ways to be out of contact,” but today “to fail to answer your mobile phone, or to turn it off completely, is merely to announce that you are deep in the throes of a secret life.”
Source: The London Review of Books
Related Links: U.S. productivity, Internet self-discipline and ‘Second Life’
According to The New York Times, whatever other problems the U.S. economy might have, America continues to outstrip its competitors in terms of productivity. The Times reports on a new survey from British researchers that concludes that U.S. companies achieve high productivity by being better at utilizing information technology than other nations.
Source: The New York Times
In 2006, U.S. workers were the most productive in the world, according to the International Labor Organization. The productivity of the average worker is measured by dividing a country’s total output in a year by the number of people employed.
Source: The BBC
The presiding spirit of the blog secretgeek.net has been procrastinating at work with constant visits to Facebook. The solution recommended here is to block the tempting Web site, and secretgeek.net offers instructions on how to do that.
Source: secretgeek.net
The cover story at Business Week in May 2006 investigated the rise of virtual companies in online computer game “Second Life.” The magazine interviewed one German gamer who is making the equivalent of $250,000 a year from selling real estate that exists only in a computer-generated fantasy land. Now, other companies are getting in on the act.
Source: Business Week
For more on how entrepreneurs are making money on online games, refer to the Beyond the Headlines story “Virtual World Makes Real Money.”
Source: findingDulcinea
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