A recent study seems to support this, finding that surfing the web at work leads to greater productivity. Moderate web surfing, of course. In this case the study out of the University of Melbourne found that employees who spend less than 20 percent of their work day surfing the web were more productive than those that don’t by nine percent.

I think we’d like our county employees to be more productive. Dominic Yagong ought to rescind his monitoring request and instead look at problem employees. Instead of assuming everybody’s abusing the system and setting up a blanket monitoring campaign, look at individual productivity and address the system that way. If someone’s doing two hours of overtime a day and still isn’t getting their job done, find out why. Don’t subject innocent — and productive — employees to a childish monitor. Treat them like adults, and perhaps you’ll get adult behaviour from them. Especially since monitoring their habits could cause them to become less productive.

Related posts: Are You Kidding Me? Councilman Dominic Yagong Wants To Waste Time And Money Tracking County Employees’ Web Site Visits at Big Island Chronicle.