Giant American company Yahoo recently announced that they were no longer allowing people to work from home. This change in policy has been ascribed to people not getting their work done while they are working remotely. And it is a growing trend – companies are becoming increasingly intolerant of any potential time being spent away from doing work.
A large number of companies that have banned all games and applications from corporate-provisioned devices, as well as social apps like Facebook, Twitter and Pintrest. This is especially true of IT companies. The problem is that now IT has become all about productivity. Indeed, in large organisations, IT is often the driving force behind keeping people productive.
Although productivity policing isn’t an issue of technology, IT does have technology tools that make it easier to implement policies of keeping devices free from unwanted programmes. You can blacklist apps entirely, sometimes by category and sometimes simply by name. But the real issue is that companies no longer trust their employees.
There is nothing wrong with trying to protect your users from the problems of malicious apps, malware, and spyware. It’s good practice for any company. But there’s no doubt it needs to be part of any company’s culture that people take responsibility for their own actions. Often we know our minds, and if a couple of moments of browsing Twitter as a quick break allows you to re-focus, then it can definitely be a good thing.
It should be possible to harness people using apps as a good thing. Make it a part of the working schedule – social media often brings news and new ideas forward. There is no need for IT to over-police productivity.
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