Web surfing while at work: maybe it’s really not a problem
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 @ 01:15 AM
There's been an awful lot of buzz recently in the press and around corporate water coolers about how much productivity is being lost by workers surfing the web while at work. Inside sales people are always a good target for complaints like these, because they work on computers virtually from 8 to 5. Martha Irvine, who writes for the Associated Press, wrote an interesting article highlighting some of the corporate concerns that was picked up on Google (URL at the bottom of this post). But I have a different take on what's going on here, and it shouldn't present a problem for any telesales department that judges productivity based on sales numbers and key performance indicators (KPI).
When I was a sales rep, I used my break time to catch up on the newspaper, but never got corporate grumbles, because I always exceeded my sales numbers. I had cobbled together my own spread sheet, telling me how many calls I had to make each day to make my sales numbers, and frankly my main concern was beating my quota every month (if you're not sure how to develop your own KPIs, read my post on the subject and get crackin'!) As Irvine points out in her article, companies are installing blocking technology to screen out various social websites, so naturally reps are responding by doing it anyway on their mobile devices. I would make a strong guess that any company using this type of filtering technology with its telesales department isn't practicing "Management by Objectives" a concept popularized by Peter Drucker way back in the 1950s. If that's the case, these companies are guessing that by removing social media access, the numbers will improve. By filtering web access, companies run the risk of putting a serious dent in team communication as it relates to worker-management relations. And in doing so, they hurt themselves personnel-wise when the word gets out that the company's draconian web practices make it a not-so-fun place to work.
In my telesales training courses, I teach people to use social sites like LinkedIn as a way to increase sales, and those of you who do just that know how effective it is. That's one of several reasons I don't like the idea of web filtering at work. I want the reps I train to make lots of money, and the web helps them get there. Now we all know there are excesses. One company of which I'm aware had a web-shopping mania in its midst, but guess what? There were no KPIs enforced, and only a minority of the reps were meeting their quotas. That's just poor management.
So if you're an inside sales manager, enforce strong sales or lead qualification objectives, and don't worry too much about your overachievers looking at Facebook occasionally. You'll have a happier crew that will want to perform for you. And add valid KPIs to your Best Management playbook.
Read Martha Irvine's article.