A news clip advised this morning:
A new study by Matthew McCarter, associate professor of management at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), looks into the bane of managers in nearly every industry: employees slacking off by excessively surfing the Internet, an activity known as cyberloafing. (The Role of the Decision-Making Regime on Cooperation in a Workgroup Social Dilemma: An Examination of Cyberloafing)
The news summary includes this line:
Cyberloafing costs hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity in the United States annually.
If that sends a wave of panic through your managers, consider the following headline:
$37 billion per year in unnecessary meetings, what is your share?.
Typical of management to strain at pennies on the ground, cyberloafing, while $100 bills are blowing just overhead, meetingloafing.
The former enables management to “manage” (read interfere with activities they don’t understand) and the latter points to management’s non-contribution to the service or product of the enterprise. You can guess which one management prefers.
Hire people who are creative/productive with a minimum of management and enable them to be creative/productive.
What’s so difficult about that?
(Unless you are in management and need to feel validated. If so, consult a priest or rabbi. They are in the business of validation.)