This Just In: People like Facebook and YouTube
- June 5th, 2008
- 5 Comments
Almost 40 percent of 18 to 24 year-old office workers said that they would consider leaving their jobs if their access to Facebook and other popular web sites was blocked from their work computers.
The survey was given to 1,000 office workers and included other sites as well, YouTube being one of them, according to vnunet.com.
The survey by IT services firm Telindus found that 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.
A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.
The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed.
It’s kind of a catch-22 for companies who want happy, productive workers. But which comes first, worker happiness or production? An office with no outside access to the Internet would be pretty brutal, I’d think, but there’s plenty of stuff on the net to see that’s much more fun than working. Would you quit your job if your company blocked access to certain popular web sites? Does your company already do that?
Whispering Smith (Who am I?)
4 months ago
My Company in the UK blocked Facebook within a couple days of my arrival. I too was ‘annoyed’ at this, but drew the line at quitting my job in protest.
hawk88 (Who am I?)
4 months ago
I don’t think Facebook or YouTube is worth 12.50 an hour seeing as most jobs in my area pay around 8/hour, then again my company loves its happy workers, with very little limit on what we can and can’t do, at least in the IT department.
SwissFreek (Who am I?)
4 months ago
Well, I’m a Navy civilian, and here within the Navy firewall, they block MySpace, YouTube, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Flickr, pretty much anything flash video, and the list goes on. Those are just the major ones. Facebook is good to go, but it was fun watching all the Status updates when they blocked it for a day or two last month.
Would I quit my job over not being able to dick around at work? Grow up. And I’m newly-turned 26 so I guess I’m outside of the 18-24 demographic, but I’m a big user of all of these services (except MySpace, blech), so yeah I find it a little annoying but I think it’s pretty reasonable for my job to expect me to do… my job.
polovinka (Who am I?)
4 months ago
http://polovinkajaa.livejournal.com/
Brian (Who am I?)
4 months ago
It’s unreasonable to expect me to actually be productively working 480 out of 480 minutes five days a week, even on my lunch break. There are few people at few jobs that don’t need to take their mind of their task for a few minutes every hour to keep their mind fresh so they can come back and focus on their work again, and I think companies should understand this. I would be very annoyed with my employer of they didn’t.
My greater concern is the blockage of things like IM, Gmail, etc. Many web services can help you get your job done and get it done quicker. Several times this month I hopped on IRC to solve a programming problem that had me stuck. I don’t know how I would have dealt with it if I wasn’t allowed to talk to other people on the internet! My current workplace uses IM extensively to communicate between employees. Even though we’re all in sight of each other it lets us get quick messages across without breaking each others focus or demanding attention if we’re busy. If my employer blocked access to many of the valuable online services that prove helpful or even necessary in doing my job I would consider leaving because I’m not interested in poor working conditions, and inappropriate tools for the task are just that.