KEY POINTS:
My gob was well and truly smacked when I learned that the country's biggest magazine publisher, ACP, was not letting staff access social networking site Facebook. I would have thought magazine staff were, to use the charming terminology of management guru Peter Drucker, "knowledge-workers" who should be expected to be promiscuous networkers as part of their job description. How else do you know hair ribbons are the new black, folk dancing is the new rock 'n' roll and Millie Holmes is the new Kate Moss?
ACP has since had to back down on the Facebook ban. But it doesn't excuse its der-brained decision to instigate it in the first place. (These days, the former Packer family business is majority-owned by private equity firm CVC Asia Pacific and, putting it charitably, it seems the nuances of the media business are not their bag, baby.) And anyway, ACP is not alone. Indeed, the owners of this fine journal have also deemed such websites off-limits.
Being bossy about use of the internet is the latest work passion-killer for control freak managers. A United States study found three-quarters of companies monitor employees' website use; 65 per cent use software to block certain websites. But all this cyber bossiness doesn't stop the surfing. Another study, by vault.com, found 87 per cent of employees surf non-work-related websites at work.
Hey, I don't blame employers for wanting to crack the whip; boosting productivity is a righteous goal. I'm just sceptical that banning the internet will make wage slaves work harder, whether they are a process worker ticking boxes or a knowledge worker who predicts cosmetic trends. But it will make them cross.
Last month, a Microsoft senior executive said jobseekers avoided companies that locked down internet access.
The truth is, if you don't want to work there is no shortage of distractions - even the Yates Garden Guide can seem riveting reading. I am a magnificent time waster myself, so I know of what I speak.
When I worked in a regular office, the other punters' jabber about commuting and Coro Street nearly drove me batty if I was trying to concentrate on writing a story. If they had just shut up and spent their time perving on nerve.com it would have aided my productivity no end. Naturally, I could also be one of the noisiest perpetrators myself but that simply proves my point. And what does management do? Pat themselves on the back about introducing trendy open-plan offices with what Douglas Coupland called veal-fattening pens.
If managers are serious about reducing distractions they should ban talking, along with water coolers, smoko breaks, coffee cups, toy monkeys, copying machines, telephones, muzak, toilets, windows and idiotic facial expressions. Oh, and why not ban customers while you're at it?
Of course if the fun police are still desperate to ban the internet at work, perhaps a gender-based rule would be fairest. Since women are prodigious multi-taskers, they can go online but men are banned in order to keep their one-track minds on the job at hand. Yep, that'll work nicely.
I'd bet you a hair ribbon that James Packer and other managers of companies that ban staff internet use can log on to Facebook whenever they feel like it. I suspect he knows that working hard is a triumph of the will over distraction - and that has little to do with whether the internet is logged on or not.
