Management Decision

Internet and employee productivity

H. Joseph Wen, Binshan Lin,
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 Internet and employee productivity
With the explosion of interest
in the Internet, deploying
desktop Internet access for
corporations is becoming
common place. Corporate
managers are dealing with
issues of blocking objection-
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able material and limiting the
viewing of leisure sites that
can impede employee produc-
tivity. The concerns are two-
fold: (1) Corporations need to
block and monitor any ele-
ments deemed unfit for
employees on the Internet,
which can include references
to issues such as sex, vio-
lence, nudity, racism and
pornography, just to mention
a few; (2) Curb the amount of
time employees spend on the
Web surfing sports and per-
sonal leisure sites when they
should be working. Useful
guidelines do exist for man-
agers looking to evaluate
employee productivity in the
Internet-based world. It
largely consists of taking a
systematic approach to the
exploration of broad-gauged
questions about Internet
access issues, blocking and
monitoring, and the nature of
your corporate culture or
policies.
Management Decision
36/6 [1998] 395–398
© MCB University Press
[ISSN 0025-1747]
H. Joseph Wen
School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, USA
Binshan Lin
Management and Marketing, Louisiana State University, Shreveport, Louisiana,
USA
Introduction
The Internet is probably the most important
global information resource of this century,
marking as it does the convergence of our two
most critical business tools: the telephone and
the computer. Basic equipment for the average
professional employee are now a phone, a
computer and an IP address. Widespread desk-
top Internet access for employees, however,
brings new challenges to management. Some
of the most critical issues include: employee
productivity; potential liability under sexual
harassment laws; and corporate/personal
time (Bhimani, 1996; Conorich, 1996; Yankus,
1996).
As companies come to rely on the Internet as
an informational tool for acquiring an incredi-
ble source of information, sharing a wealth of
resources and ideas, communicating with
people in remote corners of the globe and huge
amounts of readily accessible reference mate-
rials, there is a dilemma with delivering this
type of information technology – the drain on
employee productivity, which may translate
into thousands of dollars lost each year. Not
many corporations have yet to see the tremen-
dous impact of providing this technology to
employees at the desktop in a network envi-
ronment and very little research is currently
available on this topic.
This paper addresses the impact of Internet
access on employee productivity. Useful guide-
lines do exist for managers looking to evaluate
employee productivity in the Internet-based
world. It largely consists of taking a system-
atic approach to the exploration of broad-
gauged questions about Internet access issues,
blocking and monitoring, and the nature of
your corporate culture or policies.
Some critical issues
Bringing the Internet to employees’ desks has
many advantages for marketing, research,
communication and simple convenience. How-
ever, a recent survey developed by Robert Half
International Inc. showed that 55 percent of
150 executives polled said that time spent
accessing the Internet for non-business
purposes is undermining their employees’
productivity (Roman, 1996).
Corporations need to explore the different
avenues of offering the Internet to their
employees. Meanwhile, many productivity
issues arise when personal interests take over
while on company time. For instance, an Inter-
net access report revealed that on company
time the Disney Web page was encountered for
three consecutive hours. The company lost
three hours of wages paid to this employee for
personal reasons (Wiesendanger, 1993). Many
Internet accesses are given to management to
use, as the person deems fit; however, certain
policies and monitoring devices need to be in
place before embarking on providing Internet
access to desktops. Another example of Inter-
net access is a positive one. A senior manager
was able to complete a very detailed market
study analysis using the resources on the
Internet to provide upper management with a
very definite direction to follow based on the
results of the study, which if it was accom-
plished using a traditional approach may have
taken days, whereas this particular task
involved only a few hours. There is a great deal
of benefit in delivering the Internet to the
employees’ desktops, there just needs to be a
plan, and a way of controlling the productivity.
This is not the first time productivity has
come into play with regards to new technology
(Notes, 1996; Pitkow and Kehoe, 1996). The
introduction to the telephone – for one, had
many dilemmas with regards to productivity
and still today is a productivity issue. Monitor-
ing the time spent on phone calls for an
employee is common practice today to ensure
there is no abuse. Corporations can tell from a
detailed bill what extensions their employees
are dialing and the amount of time spent on
each call. As the owner of the technology
equipment, the corporation has a right to
know how it is being used and in what capac-
ity. The same holds true for the introduction of
the computer to the desktop (Thach and Wood-
man, 1996). Many concerns were directed to
the area that employees will play the games
that come with Windows, thereby reducing
their productivity. In many places today games
are still a means of wasting time for some
employees. This level of technology is minimal
compared to the amount of time that can be
[ 395 ]
 H. Joseph Wen and wasted on the Internet. Browsing and surfing
Binshan Lin can burn a lot of time!
Internet and employee Concern that employees are using the Inter-
productivity net for activities other than their jobs has led
Management Decision some companies to monitor what their
36/6 [1998] 395–398
employees are doing on the Internet, much as
they would review phone records for unautho-
rized calls. Though monitoring workers is
hardly a new phenomenon, the practice of
monitoring Internet use, if it catches hold, is
sure to fan the debate over employees’ rights to
privacy. Eavesdropping on employee telephone
conversations has been common practice in
some industries for many years, particularly
in customer service jobs. Office computer
networks make it possible to peer at employ-
ees’ PC screens without leaving their desks.
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It is the fear of the impact on employee pro-
ductivity that has led many corporations to
use software monitors/blockers to help screen
the sites a particular user can or cannot view.
Lockheed uses an Internet blocker program to
restrict access to Internet sources that could
“create a legal liability” for the company –
including not only sexually explicit material,
but gambling sites and areas that transmit
hate mail. There is also an issue of legal liabil-
ity should sexually explicit material be left on
a computer where it might be found by some-
one who would consider it offensive or hostile.
Although no one can cite an instance in which
a company has been sued for sexual harass-
ment because of material that came into an
office through an Internet connection there is
a general worry that this could happen.
If a corporation’s vision is to place resources
at the employee’s desktop and maintain a
productive working environment, Internet
blocking/monitoring software and corporate
Internet policies need to be in place for the
successful implementation of this technology.
Internet blockers and monitors
Internet blockers give the corporation the
ability to limit their employees access to objec-
tionable material on the Internet. Employers
can choose blockers to alert them when access
is attempted to areas, which are deemed unac-
ceptable to the corporation. As more and more
desktops are becoming equipped with Internet
access, the more these blockers will be com-
mon place (McCloy, 1995).
In the TV industry, to block inappropriate
materials, users install a V-chip, which blocks
reception based on labels embedded in the
broadcast stream. On the Internet, we can do
better, with richer labels that reflect diverse
viewpoints and more selection criteria. The
Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS)
establishes Internet conventions for label
[ 396 ]
formats and distribution methods while dic-
tating neither a labeling vocabulary nor who
should pay attention to which label (Resnick
and Miller, 1996). An illustration of Internet
PICS blocking tools is shown in Figure 1.
In addition to the term blocking, we need to
refine the type of blocking needed for the cor-
porate environment – flexible blocking (Quin-
lan, 1996). Not everyone needs to block recep-
tion of the same material. Employers may
need to block and restrict sites that are sexual
or violence related as well as prevent employ-
ees from visiting recreational sites during
normal work hours. The blockers that have
been out for some time primarily keep chil-
dren from accessing objectionable material
but allow recreational material to be accessed.
Corporations need to control this recreational
material as much as objectionable material in
order to keep employees focussed on their jobs
and not on personal issues.
Internet monitoring, on the other hand,
provides the employer with the ability to track
an employee’s Internet movements and report
on them. This gives the employee access to
surf and browse at will and through reports,
active daily monitoring and on-line notifica-
tion, administrators report on activity. Some
in the industry feel monitoring is the direction
to follow since blockers always need to be
updated to be effective. However, one can
argue that monitoring takes more time to
analyze the data.
There is a tremendous need for an advanced
set of monitoring/blocking tools to solve cor-
porate Internet productivity issues. We have
developed a list of what we believe are the
minimal functional requirements for a good
monitoring/blocking tool:
1 Allow employers to prevent Web surfing that
is not directly related to business. It protects
a corporation from legal exposure, espe-
cially in relation to downloading of porno-
graphic or racist material, and from
unwanted content. Its primary aim is to
enhance productivity by stopping employ-
ees from wasting time on visiting unautho-
rized sites.
2 Give the network administrators complete
control of which Internet services users can
access and when. It works at the operating
system level and can issue a violation
notice to the user, outlining why access has
been denied and referencing the company’s
acceptable use policies, which will be dis-
cussed at a later point in this paper. Reports
can be used just like telephone bills,
employers can evaluate length of time and
location on the Internet.
3 Monitor the most popular sites and generate
detailed reports on what sites are being
accessed, the number of times, what time of
 H. Joseph Wen and Figure 1
Binshan Lin Internet content selection blocking tools
Internet and employee
productivity
Management Decision
36/6 [1998] 395–398
Label A
Label C
Reject
Accept
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Web Server with Blocking Software
day and who are the frequent users. This
useful information can be used to generate
usage reports for an individual on the net-
work and analyze network performance as
well as measure productivity from the site
related to a particular employee’s job.
4 Allow the employer to shape the Internet to
the needs of the corporation. It will allow
access to work-related on-line resources, and
block those that are better left for off-hours. It
allows administrators to set a “master
block list” – a listing of researched Internet
sites containing material, which might be
found questionable. However, non-business
related sites could be made accessible after
normal working hours.
Even with Internet monitoring and blocking,
corporations will need to establish sound
Internet policies and guidelines for the deliv-
ery of a successful Internet access.
Developing corporate Internet
policies
Employees must know what they should or
should not be doing. Establishing good Inter-
net use policies will allow the corporation to
successfully control the deployment of the
Internet to the desktop. To set guidelines in
advance, gives the corporation an edge on
employee productivity issues and what is
considered acceptable and what is not accept-
able in their environment (Cohen, 1996; Kall-
man, 1993).
Label A
INTERNET Label B
Accept
Accept
Ethernet
The following guidelines can provide the basis
from which corporations can develop their
own Internet policies so the desktop Internet
experience can be most effective and satisfy-
ing:
• Determine what are acceptable amounts of
time to be spent on-line. Employees need to be
aware of what is an acceptable amount of
time to be on the Internet without interfer-
ing with normal work activity. If the search-
ing is not productive the employee must stop
and move on to other alternatives to acquire
the information.
• Determine what amount of that time can be
personal time, if any. Employees will need to
know if they are to have personal time on the
Internet, reminding them that personal time
means still being logged in at the company’s
identification and liability.
• Determine what material should and should
not be accessed. Education is key. Employees
need to know what is acceptable and not
acceptable material on the Internet. This
sounds easy enough but you would be sur-
prised at how one person’s acceptable sub-
ject matter varies greatly from another’s.
• Determine guidelines for downloading from
the Internet. In an effort to maintain a clean
network environment, employees must be
educated on downloading from reliable
sources, and the impact of possibly infecting
the network with a virus.
• State what should be done when objectionable
material has been accessed or discovered.
This is a very important topic to the guide-
lines and policies. Since the corporation is
[ 397 ]
 H. Joseph Wen and liable for any type of sexually explicit mater-
Binshan Lin ial (or any other objectionable material), it
Internet and employee becomes necessary to invoke procedures to
productivity reprimand employees. Strong corporate
Management Decision statements of action should be addressed.
36/6 [1998] 395–398 • State a policy for chat room use.Chat room
use usually allows employees to speak freely
on the Internet and it is up to the corpora-
tion to set policy on this issue, reminding the
employee that the he/she is representing the
company. Many corporations may choose to
deny this privilege altogether, since there is
no accurate means of measuring the conver-
sations.
• Determine when employees should and
should not be on-line. To prevent a bottleneck
in the bandwidth of the network, designated
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times for Internet usage should be deter-
mined.
• Establish rules on sending and receiving e-
mail. The employee needs to be aware that e-
mail can be monitored by the corporation
and certain phrases or content is acceptable
or not acceptable for the corporation.
• Above all, document the policies, publish
them and communicate the necessity of abid-
ing by the corporation’s established policies.
It is essential for each employee on the net-
work to recognize his/her responsibility to the
company in having access to the Internet’s
vast services, sites, systems and people. The
employee is ultimately responsible for his/her
actions in accessing the Internet. However, on
the Internet the corporation has exposure
from each employee. It is the responsibility of
all employees to abide by corporate Internet
use policy to minimize corporate liability. In
providing these guidelines and setting policy,
usage of the Internet can be an effective infor-
mational tool, but just like the phone system is
today, employers will need to monitor exces-
sive behavior on both technology platforms.
Conclusion
The Internet provides employees with a fertile
field of business information. However, compa-
nies should take employees’ Web surfing very
seriously. If not, it can become a wasteland of
lost productivity when employees spend an
excessive amount of time surfing the Web.
In this paper, we recommend companies to
apply monitoring/blocking tools and develop
Internet access policies for employees who
have access to the Internet. The choice for
Application questions
1 Does the Internet make us more produc-
tive?
[ 398 ]
Internet monitors and blockers must demand
a product that performs both – gives the
employer guidance into sites which should not
be accessed and from an administrative point
of view, ensures enough reporting takes place
to back up actions taken for reprimanding an
employee for accessing inappropriate Internet
sites. Meanwhile, Internet access policies
must indicate how much time the company
considers appropriate for Internet activities.
Education and a definition of the limits that an
employee can have will greatly impact
employee productivity.
More and more corporations will encounter
this dilemma and it will be very interesting to
see the outcome. Internet employee productiv-
ity issues will create a very serious new job
position within corporations, because it will
take plenty of resources to ensure that the
Internet technology today can proceed effec-
tively into tomorrow.
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2 How do you see your organization chang-
ing over the next five years with the fur-
ther developments and applications of the
Internet?
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