Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Boundaries within the Work Place
This summer, many of my friends and I started our first full-time internships at various companies in Milwaukee. My first day there, while sitting and staring blankly at my computer since they didn't have any work for me yet, I decided to check my Facebook account to fill the time. I typed in the site address, only to find a warning sign pop up saying, "warning: access denied to dating/social web site." I wasn't the only one to discover that many web sites are blocked at work sites- a lot of my friends experienced similar situations. Blocking of certain web sites at work is becoming a popular phenomenon, hoping that employees' attention will be directed towards their work, instead of the entertaining web sites during the work day. A first I was frustrated with this security block, thinking it wasn't fair for a company to manage what sites I can visit. But then I thought about it, and I realized a company is completely within its rights to place blocks on certain web sites. You are at work, being paid for your contribution towards the company during that time, and if you are busy surfing the web you are unfairly using paid company time for your own personal use. I think a company has every right to lace blocks on certain popular social web sites to defer peoples attention away from personal "play time" during the work hours.
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3 comments:
I agree with you, that it's in a company's right to restrict access to social websites. I know I would be upset if my employees were procrastinating on their work just to look at last weekend's pictures on facebook.
It is certainly within the organization's right and if you are being paid you should be doing work. It sucks that companies can't trust their employees enough to have a filter, but thats how it is.
I think that the workplace has the right to restrict website usage. Certainly, some websites, such as Facebook, definitely lower workers' productivity and attention span. Plus, at a job, you are getting paid to work, not surf the Internet. While it's disappointing that workplaces have to put in place such restrictions, I sugess it's necessary.
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