I read with interest that many workplaces have now blocked access to Facebook to prevent access in work time. It’s a common problem that traditionally many firms have overlooked as staff download like crazy, use instant messaging and these days access Facebook and Myspace (my eyes, my eyes…) in work hours.
Sacked for chat
I worked in a voluntary position a few years ago where a very keen and very talented 16 year old was eventually dismissed for using an instant messaging application when left alone in the office though it was more what he said in the conversation about the company than his use of the messaging application. I felt the reaction was a little over the top and deserved a warning rather than a dismissal (he was 16 for gawd’s sake) as I knew for a fact that more established ‘slackers’ in the same company spent most of the day downloading music and more whilst this lad had done more real work in a few short weeks than they had done in the previous two years.
Do as I say, not as I do
Such is the selective judgment of management who tend to treat new staff more harshly and are blind to the sins of the longer established employee. I did find the dismissal hypocritical when I knew that the manager herself spent most of the day chatting on Yahoo messenger to friends and family and indulged in some serious illegal downloading herself. Life’s like that though isn’t it.
Perhaps this is an old-fashioned view, but I do think people ought to *work* at work.
Maybe I shouldn’t judge others by my own standards.
The only times I get to ‘do my own thing’ at work is during my lunch hour or after 3.30 (if I’m lucky, not busy marking / preparing / in a meeting / all three).
It’s not just the internet that provides opportunity for skiving; I find it intensely annoying that most of my colleagues cannot live without their mobile phones. I’m forever hearing beeps and buzzes during break / lunch / meetings. A former colleague even answered their phone mid-lesson, and didn’t bat an eyelid when caught red-handed by the head.
YouTube has just been blocked at work – which I’m really annoyed about because there’s some great education content on there.
Still, I’ve brought my laptop home and will install the firefox add-on allowing me to save them to view offline. Hooray!
Hello Kirsty- my experience from the computer support side is that the ‘do as i say, not as i do’ rule will always be applied. CEO, management, headteacher, heads of department, teachers (I’ve had experience of them all) will always be the first to moan at security measures and ‘productivity’ or Internet bandwidth protection measures or restrictions. I agree that work should be for work but making it stick across the board usually involves either a lot of politics or the danger of the techies becoming control freaks. If employers trusted their employees more so that they spent more time working from home (not so applicable to teaching) and less time being forced to be unproductive in rigid work hours then maybe they’d be less (or more?)tempted to spend time on diversions such as checking their Facebook account etc?. Mobile phones seem to be a serious addiction too, especially texting. I must be lacking as I rarely use mine.
The idea that “people should work at work” overlooks the obvious fact that a lot of jobs involve sitting around waiting for something to happen. Take the telephonist-receptionist, for example, who will be desperately busy for 20 minutes and then have little to do for the next 20 minutes. In such cases, playing games, surfing the Web, etc. is not only permissible but is actually a good thing as it keeps people awake and alert.
There will always be new attractions coming online to tempt people who use computers at work and a continuing battle between them to continue accessing these and employers to stop them doing so. Before computers, it was reading or doing crosswords or the football pools. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
I have yet to see the point of Facebook. I do have an account but only because a couple of people have dragged me in and I was polite enough to respond. Being a loner, I see nothing in Facebook to attract me. I don’t want to network with every other living person on the planet.
Before I went on holiday I heard that Facebook was being sued. I don’t know the outcome. Maybe it will be closed down, solving a lot of people’s (employers’) problems.
Facebook’s got a lot of traction at the moment. Some see it as a potential Web jumping off point or even Web based operating system in that it’s going to be ‘all about the apps’, the plugins applications that grow in number everyday. All these dalliances in the workplace can be risky as they are all potential security holes or way into a commercial network so it is risky for the employer though like I say the workplace is often a dispiriting place so they sow their own seeds so to speak. The legal case concerns the young man (23!!) who set it up and his former employer who accuse him of borrowing code created in their time. It sounds like a typical ‘I want some of what you’ve got so let’s drag it through the courts or pay me off with something’ type case. It’s unlikley to be shutdown. If they prove he’s used some of the coding he created in their time then they’ll just want a slice of the pie. The opening salvo by his former employer, as I understand it hasn’t gone down well in the courts and they’ve been asked to go away and prepare a better case.