Facebook + YouTube at Work: Sharper Employees?

April 6, 2009, 02:20 PM —  PC Helps LLC — 

Workers quietly rejoice when stories like this one from Reuters hit the newswires: "Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study." It excuses their WILB-ing, or "workplace Internet leisure browsing," and may even assuage some of the guilt they feel after taking their fourth "Which Osbourne are you?" quiz.

According to the study's author, a little WILB-ing here and there sharpens employees' concentration, which is better for a company in the end.

While the Reuters story may seem like fluffy page-filler -- anything involving Facebook or YouTube is not widely considered "serious news" -- it does bring up an important issue. That is, that many companies miss the point when it comes to maximizing worker productivity. While said companies are spending millions of dollars on software blockers to prevent WILB-ing, they scrimp when it comes to giving employees the tools to get their jobs done (and many people today are doing the jobs of two or three).

If you throw the job of two at someone who used to work 50 hours a week at one, what can you expect? Surely not efficiency. And if you require employees to use specific software and processes but don't offer training and support, what then can you expect? Definitely not sharp tacks.

Until employees are viewed as not just workers but capital that needs nurture, they, as an investment, will yield no return.

I'm not advocating mandatory Facebook Breaks or on-the-clock YouTube Me Time, but I am excited that our sour economy has forced a hard look at business practices.

» posted by Jenatpchelps

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

facebook

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace