Robo-Boss
Monitoring alone won't remedy cyberslacking. "If deadlines are missed or the quality of work is going down," says RedHawk's Sullivan, "that's a performance issue and should be handled as a performance issue." The cure is a conventional get-well plan: stricter goals, better ways to benchmark performance, and other tools familiar to managers.
eSniff's Conlin agrees that technology aloneâ€"even his own productâ€"cannot solve the problem. "This isn't some magical machine that performs management for me," he says. "That's a terrible path to take, and it's not sustainable."
Worse, monitoring tools can poison office relations, promote double standards about personal business, and force managers to take disciplinary actions that are not commensurate with the abuse of productive time. What's needed, says Sullivan, are clear policies regarding all company resourcesâ€"from copiers to phones.
"Personal use shouldn't interfere with getting work done," she says, "but it doesn't necessarily have to be cut off outright." For example, a company may allow personal use before 8:30 a.m., during the lunch hour, and after 5:30 p.m.
Above all, tell employees how they're being monitored and why. Employees should also have access to any personal data you collect on them, says the American Civil Liberties Union. And you should make privacy guarantees about that information explicit.
