Stupid surveys in news outlets desperate to fill space are nothing new but something about this piece of crap got my goat this morning.
I wasn’t bothered about the Twitter bashing – that sort of nonsense hardly deserves my contempt and it’s a smoke screen. What bothered me was the notion that without the social internet, people in offices would be working at 100% productivity for 8 hours a day. This assumes that people used to work at 100% before the social internet. This, frankly, is bollocks.
In 2005 I was working in an NHS office in Birmingham. It was a pretty normal office but because it was part of the NHS it had a rather strict smoking policy. I had to walk 100 metres away from the building to smoke. They also had a policy of only having one half hour break away from desks during the day. It was completely unthinkable that I might pop out for five minutes in the morning and afternoon. That would have meant a five minute drop in productivity, or some shit.
But there was nothing stopping me just sitting at my desk pretending to do nothing, or walking around the office giving the illusion of working. I watched my fellow workers as they went through their daily grind and it was obvious to me that they were “wasting time”, often doing social things like chatting and the like.
People goof off at work not because they have access to the internet. They goof off at work because their jobs are tedious, inhuman and dull. If you want people to stop wasting time at work you need to make their work so interesting that they don’t want to waste time.
And above all you should never listen to scaremongering IT consultants who’s business is in building walls rather than opening doors.
I agree with this 100% and it gets my goat too. I can ask 400 people a question instantly, without having to phone 399 to get to the 400th who knows the answer to my tech question. If there is an accident on the way home, I can tell everyone it will cause problems for, so they can go a different way.
I do not spend 20 minutes standing next to a coffee machine or water machine talking about the X Factor. I do not do that irritating thing of perching on someones desk and loitering when bosses are nowhere to be seen. I work hard, type quick, read quicker and try and give something back to a bunch of random people who for some reason read my witterings, by trying to help them back when I can. But I seriously believe that without twitter and another forum I use to ask for help on, I’d be wasting days trying to work out something for myself which someone else can tell me how to do in minutes. Grr, and indeed Argh!
and another point is the firm who did the ‘survey’ and got the stats is also a company supplying IT to build the wall… PR press release conned the journo who wrote the article that got you mad… LOL.
It’s interesting to those of us who use the internet as a resource must continually defend the right to be online and seeking out information. Since I don’t actually use Twitter I am not sure how much productivity I might gain from signing up, but I do know that wikipedia, google and wolframalpha each provide me with short cuts to information that I would never be able to access without the ability to roam.
Far more time is wasted in offices at the water fountain or copy machine when people discuss the previous weekend’s sporting events or those “exciting” events on last night’s TV.
I’m not sure that saying people waste time in other ways is a valid defense. Its like saying that guy over there robbed a bank, so I’ll steal this car.
We all know that a bit of banter in the office makes people more productive, talking to co-workers and the social side of any company or public sector role is essential. Whether personal or directly related to work, social interaction is a good thing.
I think the problem is how people abuse the privileges. If people hopped on to Twitter when they had to crowd source, or logged in to Facebook for a few minutes when their work was out the way or they needed to clear their head it wouldn’t be an issue.
Sadly there is a minority that will take things too far, and that’s where the problem arises. Some people will spend all day chattering about their weekend just like some people will spend all day clicking links that pop in to their Twitter feeds.
The difference is that you can’t put a locked gate in front of a water cooler (you have to rely on a manager seeing it to stop it), but you can block a port to Twitter and let machines do it. And sadly, if a minority is costing 1.38bn a year, then its the majority that will suffer.
I agree wholeheartedly. But I’d go further: what is ‘time wasting?’ People tend to talk of it simply in terms of traditional office hours, without considering an employee’s contributions holistically.
For most office jobs, the boundaries between professional and personal lives are blurring to the point of being indistinguishable. Thanks to technology we can now be available at any time for both friends and colleagues. Employers who refuse to acknowledge that are missing out by not being where their market is at any point; and are probably therefore unwittingly discouraging their employees from being loyal to their jobs outside ‘office hours’.
I, and my employer, have benefited hugely from the use of social media. Those inane little messages – that take practically no time to send and respond to – help to create personal relationships which can be unimaginably valuable for support on a professional level.
For example, earlier in the year I wanted peer feedback on a web page layout. A few months earlier I would have spent time trying to find adequate people and possibly spent money commissioning someone, simply because my colleagues didn’t have the right skills for me to conduct a useful straw poll.
But because I had built up a strong personal network on Twitter, within 20 minutes of sending a quick message I had canvassed detailed feedback from more than 30 people.
But trying to balance the cost benefits of social media against the burdens is very hard to measure, and people like things to be easy. So ‘research’ such as this will continue to make the headlines.
As an aside, how many of these people “frittering away their time unproductively” are working ten-hour days when they should be working seven, due to company culture and “presenteeism”?
No one talks about what that “costs” Britain, both in terms of short-term economic gain (it’s essentially voluntary work) and long-term healthcare cost related to stress and burnout.
Leaving aside the fact of whether it’s time wasted or time spent perhaps improving things for an employer – I don’t think the figures add up.
Maths isn’t my strong point but……for the number of people surveyed (1,460) to ‘waste’ that much cash with just 40 minutes activity each week, taking out a bit of holiday (further slacking!), wouldn’t they have to be earning upwards of £29K an hour?
Dan, I’m afraid I don’t agree with your analogy with bank robbing. The point is not ‘someone else is doing it so I will too’, the point is that a new technology is being scapegoated for something people will do anyway. I’d say it’s more like blaming speeding on the size of a car’s engine.
@Dan
The point is it’s NOT costing £x billion a year. The sort of businesses where employees are able to waste time, be it on Twitter or by starring out of the window, are already deeply inefficient by dint of the fact that people are able to waste time without anyone noticing. Putting a figure on it doesn’t excuse the fact that your business is fucked in quite significant ways, and plugging an Internet port is not going to produce the sort of results you’re after – only a root-and-branch makeover of the entire company will do that.
And so on, etc…
@Sarah – I don’t think it’s about wages. This is about productivity which is where you make up a number and multiply it by another number.
@cyberdole – yup, that’s why I linked to their original press release at the end of the post. Could have been clearer, I know.
Simple solution: measure people and pay them on agreed targets of productivity not on hours worked. Then if social media is ‘wasting time’ (in some cases it is, in some cases it isn’t) then the employee will have to work more. Job done.
@susi – You’d think, wouldn’t you. But aparently that’s too complicated. Better to get an IT solution.
@susi @pete You guys are advocating piece work? Erm, that’s a bit well, Tory isn’t it?
This is a ropey bit of research but it highlights a fear I hear every time I talk to someone in the public sector about social media. In fact their fear is double given that they want to ensure their workers remain productive and although they realise aspects of social media might support that productivity they’re wary of the press reaction if they unblock it. They know that for them to use it better requires resource, and resource is scarce, and spending resource on training employees or developing strategies and policies in social media use is another penny not spent on something the Daily Mail thinks they should be spending it on.
So in this landscape a bit of poor quality research by an IT company with a product to sell will find an open door.
What’s needed here is a ropey bit of research that shows social media increases productivity and produces cashable savings. That would be more than welcome in the public as well as the private sector.
@Dave – Not sure I’m advocating piece work. More a better way of measuring whether someone is doing their job properly. Pay them for 37.5 hrs a week but evaluate their work more intelligently. Or something. Not my area to be honest!