According to Nielsen Online, 25 percent of office workers admitted to having visited porn sites while on the clock during the month of October. Imagine how many of the other 75 percent did too! Add to that the number who spend work time tweeting, or blogging, or IMing, or shopping, or gambling, or watching movies and TV... you get the idea. The Internet has become such a rich source of time wasting entertainment that it is surely sucking the productivity out of your office workers. Even the most dedicated, hard working employees find themselves checking out a YouTube video or reading a friend's latest Facebook update. These innocent activities are no danger to your organization's success, until they start inadvertently dragging people's attention away from their primary activity.
In recent weeks, several of Port-to-Port's Indianapolis small business computer consulting clients have asked us to put a stop to open online browsing. Some have cited specific sites that are creating problems, like when they streamed the tie-breaker round of the US Open last year, or the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament games. Most are concerned that there is so much online activity that if their people just did quick checks of all the sites they frequent, a significant chunk of the day gets eaten up. So we've been experimenting with different ways of monitoring and filtering web traffic as a part of our Indianapolis computer services. Most work well enough to keep the casual surfers from straying off task. Making the proper selection requires some discussion of the ultimate desire of the business owner.
I entered the early discussions of filtering thinking this was a bad thing for a business owner to do to his staff. As I've gotten more knowledgeable about the impact, I've become convinced that we all should at least consider it. The Internet can waste a lot of time. It's insidious in its approach to doing it too. Have you ever starting searching for something and then found yourself in a completely different place nearly an hour later. I know I have.
The thing that convinced me was my recent experiences with the Roku Netflix Player that I bought for home. It's a device that connects to my television and allows me to watch any of the instant movies from Netflix. The first day I hooked it up, I watched SIX movies in a row before I realized what I had done. I have to keep the thing locked up to keep myself from getting lost in movieland.
In recent weeks, several of Port-to-Port's Indianapolis small business computer consulting clients have asked us to put a stop to open online browsing. Some have cited specific sites that are creating problems, like when they streamed the tie-breaker round of the US Open last year, or the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament games. Most are concerned that there is so much online activity that if their people just did quick checks of all the sites they frequent, a significant chunk of the day gets eaten up. So we've been experimenting with different ways of monitoring and filtering web traffic as a part of our Indianapolis computer services. Most work well enough to keep the casual surfers from straying off task. Making the proper selection requires some discussion of the ultimate desire of the business owner.
I entered the early discussions of filtering thinking this was a bad thing for a business owner to do to his staff. As I've gotten more knowledgeable about the impact, I've become convinced that we all should at least consider it. The Internet can waste a lot of time. It's insidious in its approach to doing it too. Have you ever starting searching for something and then found yourself in a completely different place nearly an hour later. I know I have.
The thing that convinced me was my recent experiences with the Roku Netflix Player that I bought for home. It's a device that connects to my television and allows me to watch any of the instant movies from Netflix. The first day I hooked it up, I watched SIX movies in a row before I realized what I had done. I have to keep the thing locked up to keep myself from getting lost in movieland.
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