Memo to Conservative Companies: Web Surfing's Okay

Posted by: Jena McGregor on September 19

Here’s an interesting statistic for a Friday, as you find your mind (and your mouse) wandering to the weekend. A survey by the Creative Group, a staffing division for advertising and marketing professionals that’s part of Robert Half International, has found that 57 percent of advertising and marketing executives said that surfing the web during work hours is acceptable.

That, warns Littler Mendelson attorney Philip Gordon, should prompt companies to rethink some of their policies. “How does an employer reconcile this apparent new-found acceptance of on-the-job Web surfing,” he writes on the employment law firm’s blog, “with the American Management Association’s finding in its 2007 survey of workplace monitoring that 30% of employers surveyed had fired an employee for Internet surfing at work?”

It’s hard to believe that any employer would strictly ban Web use completely. Such rules seem draconian, paternalistic, and overly stringent for employees who are likely already doing far more for their employers than 9 to 5. Gordon’s blog has a good run-down of appropriate limitations these more traditional employers may want to take, such as establishing bandwidth limits and of course, not opening the floodgates to online gambling and pornography. “What is left,” he writes, “might actually enhance productivity or create some good will.”

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