A recent article in the NY Times talks about new network monitoring software that will “learn” about employee’s web behaviour and give the company finite control over restrictions and settings. I won’t repost the whole article, but this pretty much sums it up:
…one company might say that marketing folks can only visit YouTube during lunch hour, and even then, they can only upload two megabytes to the site each day. Engineers might be blocked from visiting Facebook…but everyone else can.
I’m not saying companies shouldn’t monitor network traffic and use, it’s a legit concern. But if software like this works as well as promoted, I see one problem: we’re not machines. Applying strict rules onto users will just make them unhappy and that ultimately results is poor results.
I’m one that believes people will naturally find their balance at work. No one works 8-hours solid. It’s just not possible, and frankly, not healthy. Everybody needs some time during the day to just chill for a few. Some people may go outside for a smoke, some might walk around the building, some might scratch their butt, some, like me, just stay on-line and visit web sites they enjoy but aren’t work-related.
Me, I hit up my video game blogs, check my personal e-mail, manage my personal sites and that type stuff. All said and done, it maybe takes 15-30 minutes of my day. No big deal. If I spend more time than that I feel like I’m jipping myself out of work time. I know I have stuff to do and I know how much time it takes to get it done. Most people won’t abuse their time because fear will keep them in check - at least that’s what I’ve witnessed. If you just trust people things will usually work out for the best.
I’m sure the thought behind applying smart software that tracks individuals and adjusts based on habits is that it will stop those that do abuse their work time. I guess my philosophy on this is that instead of using a blacklist method that effects everyone, if you find someone is spending too much time hanging out on YouTube, you deal with them. You warn them, suspend them, fire them, whatever…you deal with the person directly. You don’t puss out and let technology to do your people management for you. That’s just weak. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to work for a company that manages their employees that way.
Everybody works best in different environments. And that’s not limited to physical environments, but digital/on-line environments too. You can’t look at sheer numbers to determine what people are doing. Behaviour doesn’t work by the numbers and by saying, “Brian spends 30 minutes on Gmail a day means he’s wasting time,” is quite ignorant and might do more harm than good in the long.
Of course, all this is assuming companies will pretty much abuse this network management power. Some will, some won’t, but just having that ability will turn even the lax network admin into a network nazi. Actually, software like this might even eliminate that admin job…so you better watch out.
