Cyberslacking… problem or not?!

An article in the South China Morning Post last Saturday, September 8th 2007, discussed cyberslacking, or how people waste time in the office by going online. Although the word cyberslacking has in itself a negative connotation, the article argues that not all kind of cyberslacking is armful to companies. For example, if people can perform online transactions or activities that would normally require them to extend their lunch hours to complete, then it could be good… yes, but at the same time, if they can do it online, they could do it from home as well, no?

Anyway, the author provides quite a number of examples of how employees can spend time online to explore new horizons or just “waste” their time. A 10-point list is provided:

• Do some networking (e.g. Facebook)
• Rant about work (e.g. Annoying Coworker, Customers Suck)
• Go online shopping (e.g. eBay)
• Judge beauty contests (e.g. Hot or Not, Rate My Puppy)
• Catch up on celebrity gossip (e.g. the Superficial)
• Write a personal blog (Blogger, Livejournal… and let me add WordPress)
• Read about the lives of others (e.g. a waiter, a coffee barista)
• Play computer games (e.g. Yahoo! Games, MSN Games… and let me add my favorite Miniclip)
• Run your own sports team (e.g. Fantasy Sports)
• Slack off in secret (e.g. Don’s Boss Page)

Slacking is nothing new I guess. Before the Internet, people would be wasting their time in the office as well. In France we had the “ten coffee breaks a day” rule (I may exaggerate a bit here). It is impossible to ask an employee to be 100% of the time working in the office. Nobody can do that, and it is even harmful. Our brains just can’t handle non-stop working. I’d say that working 80% of the time is not bad already…

It seems to be that the most important part in the word cyberslacking, is “cyber”. Not that cyberslacking is hard to resist, as the whole world is opened up to you, like the SCMP article mentioned above argues, but “cyber”, as having no contact with real people! Slacking or coffee breaks before were opportunities to chat informally with other employees, thus getting to know co-workers, building a team spirit. However cyberslacking is one person with his or her computer screen well hidden from others.

In that respect, it seems to me that intranets or corporate social networking could be a solution to that. The corporate culture has to be right of course, but if the Internet can be used to make employees interact more among themselves, then cyberslacking could be a powerful tool. Could we call that “social cyberslacking”? But then there is the danger of falling into the Facebook trap, where it is so easy to waste entire hours with no purpose even though you come into contact with other people.

Once again the answer to better efficiency is like in all the business books we can read. You just have to hire great people, have a great corporate culture, assign challenging jobs, and do all that happily… That’s easy, no?