When IT Blocks Facebook, Multiply, Youtube
I heard about that NASCAR April Fool’s joke that backfired. Being (somewhat) in the Automotive industry, I promptly searched Google to see what had happened.
As I clicked on the news story link, I was welcomed by our dreaded office IT blocking filter. It said:
The URL you are accessing has been blocked by the Barracuda Web Filter because it is blacklisted by your system administrator
Frustrated. I was forced to read Google’s cached copy of the article.
Bad user experience (UX). Period.
Yes, that’s how it is. Social networking sites? Blocked. Youtube? Blocked.
Realities of corporate office life. It makes me want to throw back this interesting study:
…people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.
Yup. People are more productive if IT doesn’t block the fun stuff.
“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity,” said Coker. “That’s not always the case.”
Here’s another interesting study:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology say regular breaks are key to forming memories.
Coffee breaks – or at least, breaks from activity – are a necessary part of the learning process. Learning is a productive process.
Why would IT departments block these sites anyway? Not office-related? Eating up bandwidth?
Frankly I find it a lame excuse for any IT department (or company who is in the web business like online retail or web marketing) to say “Bandwidth problems require restriction”. This is such a Nazi way of thinking. It also doesn’t solve the core issue – there is a NEED FOR MORE BANDWIDTH.
The other issue with that is – how can you address the needs of your customers if you can’t even make your own staff happy? When employee morale is high, they’ll naturally sell the company.
Not office-related? This is a rather subjective topic. How would one clearly delineate non-office vs. office information? Heck that social networking website could just be the branding boost that the company needs. Haven’t you been reading what’s online? SOCIAL MARKETING is the trend these days.
Simply put – good user experience (UX) breeds more referrals. How could one even twitter services and products when Twitter.com is blocked?
Here’s my counter argument for automatic filtering and blocking:
What if, by sheer chance, one of your research teams need information that is blocked. Now, they’ll have to make a request to UNBLOCK the website. By the time the website is available for them, hours or days have passed. What would have been a 30 minute research now takes longer. Where did the productivity go? You’ve just effectively made your research teams more UNPRODUCTIVE.
Here’s proposed solution to bandwidth problems – instead of IMPOSING restrictions. Why not inform people instead?
Make an internal website that automatically shows who are top bandwidth hogs per day. Let everyone see it. Chances are, people will become aware of all the non-office stuff they work on. Employees will naturally adapt. Peer pressure will push them to really productive instead.
Get it?
Take a lesson from companies like SEMCO. Ricardo Semler, its CEO, adopts a democratic office – the only one of it’s kind.
Among many ‘radical’ policies, Semler let his employees set their own hours, design their workplace, choose their own IT, share all information and have no secrets. Every six months bosses are evaluated by their subordinates and the results are posted.
Now, listen to what I say and just let me see that damned news item.
hehehe… i can really feel the angst.
But seriously, IT people are charged in making sure that the IT resources are used efficiently and I can tell you that web browsing is not only stuff that requires internet connectivity.
On the network i take care of, I originally started with a free for all ttitude assuming will be responsible enough not to abuse their internet access but we all that there is always a group of people who will abuse these privileges at the expense of everyone else (big bosses included).
So what to do? Ask for higher bandwidth? good luck asking for more funding for your internet connectivity. and im sure even if management approves increased bandwithd, those abusive fellows will adjust accordingly.
In the end, things like website blocking are essential because not everyone is responsible enough to share.
on the note of which sites to block. i agree that these things are subjective. but sometimes, people just abuse these stuff.
hehehe sorry defensive lang… IT po kasi ako….
Hahaha. No prob.
I still hold on to the information-sharing credo. Share the info – who’re the bandwidth hogs? Let everyone see. Have dynamic bandwidth monitor per PC. When it suddenly spikes – then everyone knows someone is “youtubing” or streaming. Work on the “embarassment”/peer-pressure.
I sincerely think it’s much more effective that way (long term).
Lol Ely, di mo kinaya? Kelangan i-blog? :)
Seriously though, it has become more difficult for the SEO team to find new marketing avenues to get links from when that Barracudracula keeps popping here and there. It’s funny how we want to jump into the web 2.0 bandwagon, and yet block the most important web 2.0 sites out there.
You are robots you are paid to work and not to have fun. *drone, drone, drone, drone*
Riz, Yep. Kailangan i-blog.
Mae. Pfft.
funny I clicked riz’s link and barracuda said guitarchick.net is “Not Work Related”
http://www.guitarchic.net/ I mean…
Rmartinez.. i think it’s because of the word “Guitar” heheh
Haha, I can totally sympathize now with our Barracuda system now Ely. :p I’ve been trying to impose myself not to bring my macbook with my broadband kit to avoid social networking sites.
Hugz. LMAO
LOL. Ahh life.
i believe there are two kinds of I.T. or sysadmins. First are the controlfreaks and powertrippers who think that the user is the enemy and the other one who treats users as coworkers. As a sysadmin myself, I choose to be on the second group. It’s easy to become “strict” and block/remove all services/access to what one may think as potential security risk, time/bandwidth wasters and other stuff that users enjoy. But doing this is missing the point of INFORMATION Technology and very few I.T. people recognize the users as the reason for their employment. I’d like to think that as an I.T. it’s one of my job to make access to the Internet/Information available to everyone in the company while finding balance between security, usability and control. Any policy that requires people “to be responsible” will not work because that’s human nature. Any I.T. worth his salt must know how to find balance between usability and a network that is resistant to “user abuse”. The technology to do this is available and even come built-in to most of the routers. Features such as QOS, scheduled access, traffic shaping, etc. can do the trick, as oppossed to unceremoniously totally blocking anything they think is a threat or a waste of time. This is very important if the company’s business is in the field of media/arts and the users are the “creative” people such as artists and writers because they do much more quality work if they are not frustrated. The same applies to call-centers. How can the agent solve the caller’s problem immediately if he/she can not research on Google because web browsing is not allowed? My 2 cents. :)