Evaluate the impact of technology tools such as internet in work performance. Does the ability to engage in leisure activities such as Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools during work improve productivity, or does it act as a distraction?
The
significant
increase
of
technology
and
connectivity
in
the
workplace in recent years has lead to an unexpected, potentially negative, by-product of behaviours demonstrated by many employees, which is now commonly referred to as cyberloafing, cyberdeviancy or cyberslacking. While on the surface the initial response by most business owners and managers is that cyberloafing is a wasteful activity costing the company money through loss of productivity as a result of employees spending company time on personal endeavours, there has been another, more positive spin off, to the personal use of technology. These aspects have been investigated and expanded upon during numerous investigations into these behaviours. It has also been found that there are several factors within the workplace, such as technology use policies, that can contribute to employee behaviours in relation to use of company provided technologies that will be explored within this essay.
1
While many business owners and managers would like to see the occurrence of cyberloafing in the workplace eradicated completely there is plenty of evidence available from multiple independent studies that not all personal technology use in the workplace has a negative affect on worker productivity or workplace moral. It has been reported that brief periods of personal use of workplace technology for tasks such as sending and receiving personal e-mail, using social networking sites and watching online videos can have a positive influence on an employees mental condition and state of mind therefore
