Productivity Versus Empowerment

<B>Productivity Versus Empowerment</B>

Listen to the confessions of a cyber-bludger: "When I arrive in the office at 9:00 a.m., I normally greet my coworkers first, then boot up my laptop. I get some coffee and chat for a few minutes before settling in my office." By 9:30 a.m., the New York Stock Exchange has opened, so "I fire up my browser to check my portfolio for any alarming surprises. Normally, there are a couple of stocks that are worth looking into (five minutes) or a trade that cannot wait (five minutes). Quickly I check my personal e-mails and respond to a couple of messages and delete the junk mail (10 minutes). Today, I know that I have to make arrangements for an upcoming business trip. Getting an airline ticket, a hotel and a car rental takes me a bit of time, particularly because I like to shop around before committing to buy (45 minutes). That way, I save the company some money, and since I'm checking airfares, I take a few moments to research prices for my upcoming annual family Christmas get-together in Atlanta (30 minutes). I know I'll have to buy the tickets soon if I want to get a decent price, but I can do this some other day. I am now ready for my 10:30 a.m. meeting, for which I am running three minutes late, but I know I am not the only one." Joe, who asked for anonymity, is a director of marketing for a company in New York. His workday represents the general attitude that using the Internet for personal business is a common practice.

Joe spends an average of one hour every day on personal Web activity. In preparing for this article, I spoke with several management employees who truthfully disclosed their online behavior at work. So, is Joe's behavior unique? Hardly. In general, the routine of a growing number of employees with online access is fairly similar. It is all productive, though. There's not much aimless surfing, but a lot is personal business on company time.

To a certain extent, we can all relate, and those who cannot understand might wish they could relate. Whether it is checking news, bank accounts, e-bills, real estate or shops, Joe does what many other employees across Corporate America do in the "privacy" of their cubicles and offices: They conduct electronic errands. While some companies have instituted policies to curb use of the Web for non-company-related matters, or cyber-bludging, others have installed Web-filtering technology to prohibit viewing of offensive or non-company-approved materials.

At the same time, and in an effort to reduce costs, streamline processes and simply to enhance employee life, Corporate America has rolled out extraordinary implementations of Web-based empowering tools for travel and communications. These include such intranet-based products as online booking engines that capture corporate travel policy, weather conditions, package tracking, traffic update links, etc., as well as unlimited and unbounded extranet access to the World Wide Web.

Despite all of this empowering technology, to what extent have we improved processes at the expense of employee productivity? Net-net, are corporations better off?

According to Internet research company Red Sheriff, this phenomenon is costing Australian businesses $312 million an hour, or $22.5 billion a year. The Angus Reid Group, a research firm, revealed that Canadian employees waste up to 800 million business hours on personal matters online. Compare that with the United States, where every year, according to the Gartner Group, non-work-related surfing costs businesses $54 billion, and 30 percent to 40 percent in productivity losses.

We have evidence from various private investigative reports that have quantified the economic impact of cyber-bludging. The data is conclusive when analyzed at face value, but the context is a bit more complicated.

"Although 62 percent of employees admit to using the Internet for personal reasons, according to a recent survey by Yankelovich Partners, many corporations are managing that use by implementing filtering software," said Kevin Blakeman, president of SurfControl, which offers such a product. "With this software, they can now reserve their bandwidth during the day for productive work-related use, and open up personal-use hours when the demands on the network are low. Many of our customers have even placed full access computers in common areas, replacing the water coolers of yesterday."

We recognize that this activity has a productivity cost. However, is it just a change in the medium? That is, instead of using the phone, or asking coworkers for information at the water cooler, now employees use the Web for personal needs.

This is certainly an area of growing discussion in Corporate America, but not many companies are taking an active stand publicly. Policies are loosely enforced and employees have a sense of limited entitlement to surfing.

Unchecked, this behavior can lead to a serious impact in corporate productivity. Overreaction or control by executives can lead to subtle retaliation or a shift in the medium used, however, due to perceived loss of trust, freedom or privacy. Corporations can protect their network bandwidth, employee productivity and even their legal liability by implementing filtering tools.

In the travel space, a growing portion of leisure travel planning is performed during regular business hours. After all, that is exactly what many corporations encourage people to do for business travel. While Joe does spend about an hour a day for personal reasons on the Web, he also depends on the Web for business-related transactions. Joe did in fact arrange his business trip using the company's corporate booking tool.

It is not certain whether companies will achieve adequate control over this behavior and loss of productivity. However, it is certain that our businesses must develop good management practices through prudent policies and guidelines, while providing value and freedom to our employees.

In travel, for example, corporations have focused on the application of a corporate policy over the company's spending plan through the use of corporate discounts and preferred suppliers.

In the future, travel managers will extend the reach of their agreements with travel suppliers to access leisure activities for their employees. These leisure travel services may be offered on the company's intranet or through the corporate booking product.

When such leisure services are offered in conjunction with good policy guidelines on the use of the Internet for personal activities, companies can achieve a good balance of control and freedom that improves productivity. The quality of work life and improved travel savings will result through the accelerated adoption of all online corporate services.

After all, employees are going to continue dreaming and planning their vacations or weekend getaways while at work, so why not create a winning situation, so they can return to their work quickly.

There are ways to make the process more efficient. Talk to your technology providers and start the discussion about incorporating vacation/leisure travel planning capabilities on your existing intranet travel sites. Additionally, begin the conversation with your travel suppliers to extend the scope of your agreements to include that leisure business.

More market share is good for everyone and will lead to a more attractive overall agreement for your company and employees.

<I>Steve A. Cossette, president and COO of Neat Group Inc. in Houston, serves as a member of the Business Travel News editorial board.