Professional, Personal, or Puerile

Have you chanced upon an employee viewing family pictures from Aunt Sadie or found them chuckling at the latest Internet video sensation while at their desk? My educated guess is that you have and likely have on more than one occasion. Do you think these employees would be shocked to know just how much time they actually spend clicking on every link sent their way? I think so and, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article there are applications that will serve to assist them. Employees, Measure Yourselves author H. James Wilson offers up a few such apps designed to do anything from measure how much time users spend on various websites to those that requests the user enter what tasks were accomplished each day.

Benefits to self-tracking and monitoring include understanding individual habits and productivity and devising the most productive task schedule. For example, some employees may find that they switch to social media, etc... when they feel a lull in their creativity and may find a boost of creativity after an off-task break. Don't believe this? Take a look at this article based on a University of Copenhagen study (the title says it all): Why Wasting Time on the Internet at Work Makes You a More Focused Employee. Others, may find that the pull of social media sites too enticing and find out they are much less productive on days where their YouTube viewing escalates. How will employees feel about being encouraged to utilize web sites that they may view as the company looking over their shoulder? Wilson offers this advice:

   "Many workers might be reluctant to track what they do if they think the company might get access to the information, or use it against them. Companies should emphasize that this type of software usually comes with lots of privacy controls. Workers can often store their data in the cloud, for instance, or locally on their machines. In some cases, they can pause tracking and delete pieces of personal data they choose. Likewise, they can also create a list of sites that they want to track by name and label all the other sites they visit as generic."