Personal web use on the job leads to LESS productive workers

Do Facebook and Twitter boost productivity or simply waste massive amounts of time?

In a recent post, Andrew Kameka discussed a study that indicates personal web use during work hours can enhance productivity. Well, that’s what the people behind the study claim. I, however, hold a different opinion and think that personal web use is likely to reduce productivity.

Let’s start by looking at the study. Here’s how it worked (words borrowed from the aforementioned post by Andrew):

In an experiment conducted by NUS, three groups of people were asked to highlight as many uses of the letter ‘A’ they could spot in a text, perform another activity for 10 minutes, and then highlight the letter ‘E’ afterwards. Group 1 was asked to do more work, Group 2 was given a break to do anything except use the Internet, and Group 3 was allowed to browse the web for leisure. Here are the results:

• Group 1 (More work) – 227 highlights
• Group 2 (Take a break) – 272 highlights
• Group 3 (Browse the web) – 316 highlights

The most obvious weakness in this study is that it was conducted only once. Inevitably, one group had to come out on top, and it could be pure coincidence that it happened to be Group 3. Further, it’s quite possible that a couple of bright sparks within Group 3 could have swayed the results. Run the exact same test again with the participants assigned to a different groups, and there could well be a completely different outcome. Were a statistician to look at this test, I suspect s/he’d conclude that it’s not possible to read too much into it (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about that!).

Another weakness is that the test was conducted in a controlled environment, not in the real world. In the control environment, Group 3 were allowed to spend ten minutes – and no more than ten minutes – chatting with their buddies on Facebook before they were sent back to work. In the real world, however, they wouldn’t be sent back to work after ten minutes – instead, they’d be free to keep on chatting for as long as they wished.

Of course, do a quick Google search and you’ll find numerous studies and articles which disagree with this study – this one, for example:

Nielsen’s quarterly “Three Screen Report” on U.S. media use showed that approximately 44 percent of all online video is viewed in the workplace. In April, it was revealed that U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission employees spent up to eight hours a day accessing online porn [link added]. The same month, Nielsen disclosed that more than 21 million Americans–or 29 percent of working adults- access adult websites from work.

Last year, Nucleus Research released the results of an employee survey showing that companies that allow workers to access Facebook during business hours lose an average of 1.5 percent in total employee productivity. Some employees said they accessed their Facebook accounts as much as two hours daily during work hours, with 87 percent admitting they had no clear business reason for doing so.

Hmmm. Doesn’t sound like it’s boosting productivity in these instances, does it?

There have always been workplace slackers and we’ve probably all worked with one (or more!). The person who’d spend ages chatting at the water cooler, or take a newspaper into the toilet and disappear for an hour or more or who’d sneakily read a paperback novel they had concealed behind work papers. The internet simply provides these people with another way to fill their workdays without actually having to work.

What do you think? Do Facebook and Twitter boost productivity or simply waste massive amounts of time? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.