Cutline Speaks

Workers of the world unite! For Facebook access at work!

posted by Michael on August 27, 2009

Just read a great piece from Slate technology columnist Farhad Manjoo from earlier this week. Manjoo examines the corporate IT practice of locking down employee access to the web and web-based technologies for security purposes, and finds it lacking for the following reason:

“The restrictions infantilize workers — they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies' success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity — they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.”

Pretty fiery stuff. But Manjoo continues, citing recent research to argue that open web access doesn't just promote creativity, it also spurs productivity:

“Indeed, there's no empirical evidence that unfettered access to the Internet turns people into slackers at work. The research shows just the opposite. Brent Corker, a professor of marketing at the University of Melbourne, recently tested how two sets of workers — one group that was blocked from using the Web and another that had free access — perform various tasks. Corker found that those who could use the Web were 9 percent more productive than those who couldn't. Why? Because we aren't robots; people with Web access took short breaks to look online while doing their work and the distractions kept them sharper than the folks who had no choice but to keep on task.”

And Manjoo's not alone here: To cite just one example, these points evoke a similar argument presented by former Google CIO Douglas Merrill in the BlackHat 2009 opening keynote earlier this month. 

I've been pretty fortunate in my career to date — I've split the last 10 years pretty evenly between a technology news organization, a relatively tech-savvy grad school, and a consumer technology PR firm, and I've always had pretty open access to the web when I've been "on the clock."

But I know there are a lot of you out there who have to deal with IT-imposed restrictions in your jobs, and I'd love to hear from you on this issue. Are restrictions like these holding you back, or are they manageable? What would you change, if you could? Weigh in below in the comments section.

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