• silicon.com
• Management
• CIO Insights

By silicon.com, 12 July 2004 17:45

The latest research from silicon.com has once again revealed that 'cyber-loafing' is to blame for a huge dent in the productivity of the UK workforce.

But respondents to the survey think that's nothing compared to the effect that a lack of motivation is having on staff and therefore their company's productivity.

But are the two issues really separate - it seems far more likely that this is symptom and cause. Aren't staff just likely to be wasting time on email, IM and surfing the web because they lack motivation or feel unchallenged or undervalued in their jobs?

It's quite possible - even if the time-waster has often been the fall guy when cyber-loafing becomes a matter requiring discipline.

But when bosses catch somebody wasting their working day on email they must ask: Who is the real culprit? Should detection of such breaches of policy be more to do with identifying mismanagement than with disciplining serial procrastinators? Should monitoring software be an informative management tool rather than an undercover network policeman?

In truth the answer lies somewhere in-between.

The immediacy of the internet and email means many staff will often be distracted when the challenges presented them during their working day fail to inspire or when mismanagement leaves them feeling undervalued or fails to make full use of their skills.

In such a case it seems likely that cyber-loafing is symptomatic of something more fundamentally wrong and certainly more company-wide than isolated incidents.

But let's not let everybody off the hook with universal excuses about bad bosses or failing HR departments and let's not forget that we are all 'here' to do a job - though an element of leniency towards recreational surfing and email often fosters better staff relations.

There are always those who would waste time whether they were challenged or not and whether they were motivated or not. There are those who couldn't care less about the quality of their manager as long as they have enough bandwidth to handle their cyber-loafing needs.

In the words of David Guyatt, CEO of filtering specialist Clearswift: "There will always be people who want to take advantage of the goodwill of a company and abuse resources available to them."

And there is no reason why those people shouldn't be tracked down and removed from their jobs - assuming they are in breach of a clearly communicated internet usage policy. In fact companies may well find that by running the genuine time-wasters out of town the morale among more hard-working, if slightly directionless, staff takes an upturn for the better.