Face facts, workers need a break

Research online this month has found that almost 90 percent of US Internet users spend a minimum of seven hours a week managing their email, social networking accounts and other communications, new research claimed (www.techpartner.news/?97085).

A national survey commissioned by the developers of Fuser found that 43 percent of Internet users belong to at least two social networking sites and that 66 percent of users spend 10 or more hours a week managing their online communications.

“This recent survey validates what we all know to be true – that each of us spends a significant amount of time and energy managing multiple email and social networking accounts,” said Jeff Herman, president of Fuser.

“The irony is that the majority of these types of communication media were developed to make communications easier and more productive, yet many users are feeling burdened by the task of managing multiple accounts.”

Talk of the effects of your myspaces and your facebooks is rife across the office. The problem in managing this comes in the gap between who is controlling what staff can view and the users of such sites. By this I mean it is likely a man at the top of the company tree will read something along the lines of the above research and without much knowledge of the sites enforce complete restrictions on access.

There are clearly supporting arguments for such restrictions being put in place including the security threats which may be introduced to the workplace, but the main point which is bothering the decision makers is productivity. They don’t like the idea of workers spending seven hours away from what they are in the office to do. How dare they hey?

However it’s less of a problem when workers are coming in early, working through lunch or staying late. It seems to matter less if their stress levels are rising and they are having unrealistic demands being placed at their feet. If many office workers got paid on an hourly rate, rather than a salary, then their bank balances would be looking far healthier. I’d imagine this would also be the case for a lot of reseller employees, too.

Access to social networking sites needs to be restricted and seven hours seems a steep figure, but a total ban could cause employee resentment to their levels of work and the hours they are putting in. Alright, I may be on Facebook, but I can’t remember ever spending more than five to 10 minutes on the site at a time. And I don’t know why you would want to either.

Employees deserve the right to access such sites, providing it is done in moderation. We all need to break up the day in the office, and providing the job is still getting done to the highest standard, I can’t see the problem.

a break face facts need software workers