The SMH ran this article yesterday (17Jan2006): "Study probes web habits of office slackers" .
The study conducted by Monash Uni (Melbourne) claims:
"Cyberslacking could be eating up as much as a quarter of the time employees spend online - and even more if they have outgoing personalities ..."
emailing friends was the most popular activity reported in the survey, which was attempting to match personality types with internet misuse at work - the findings indicated that, contrary to previous studies, introverted participants were not the key offenders!!! (Why is that so surprising??)
Kerryann Wyatt (the psych student researcher) conducted the survey to address "...the increasing concerns arising over internet usage at work."
"There is very little applied research being done in this area and employees need to get a handle on this issue to revise supervisory procedures," she said.
The article goes on to state: "Cyberslacking is not a new phenomenon. In 2000 internet security company Surfcontrol estimated that every employee in Australia was taking the equivalent of a two-week cyber-holiday each year, costing the nation $22.5bn annually."
What?? How did they manage to extrapolate that one out???? And of course, that's assuming that the internet searches being conducted and use of the internet wasn't any form of informal learning or perhaps just-in-time knowledge searches....right?
And - does this mean..when they (employers) now conduct psych testing prior to offers of employment they will be determing your personality type and consequently your level of internet access restrictions...hmmm? Getting scary, isn't it?!
(Did they do a survey on how much time smokers spend standing in the street....and I wonder if that correlates to cyberslacking....?)
