From the SiliconValley.com website, Technology lets coffeehouse regulars tend to business, by Kristen Kauffman, Dallas Morning News (Dec. 16, 2003) focuses on the wireless coffee shop (e.g. Starbucks) trend.

'While telecommuting has been touted as the high-tech future of work life, people such as Smith have found that the solitude of the home office isn't ideal -- and that the coffee shop blends the independent work style and comfortable, social work routines nicely.

'``People are social animals,'' said John Slocum, who holds the O. Paul Corley Professorship of Management at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. ``They need social interaction, whether they get it from work or Starbucks, it doesn't matter.'' Slocum said the coffeehouse provides officelike connections, but with the added benefit of no office politics.

'``You're working, they're working -- there's social cohesion,'' he said.'

4:26:28 PM    
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InformationWeek Research published the results of a survey of 225 business-technology professionals asking about personal web surfing on the job (The Privacy Lawyer: Crack The Online Whip by Parry Aftab, Dec 15, 2003). The individual responses included many who pointed to the blurring of work and personal time, and considered this a fair trade off for doing work during personal time to meet deadlines. 

' "Work and personal time have merged in the modern workplace," said one respondent. Some saw it as a quid pro quo for the personal time they give up to work, given the fluidity of the workplace and telecommuting.'

'Bottom line, except when legal or security risks are involved, it comes down to productivity. One of the respondents said it very well: "The final benchmark of employee productivity shouldn't be total time, but the quality of the work product produced. If an individual surfs a few hours a week, but produces outstanding work product, it's up to the enterprise to decide what it truly values." '

However a related article by the same author, Why Employees Surf. And Why You Should Stop Them (Dec. 15, 2003) offers the opinion that "Network administrators need to have full control of everything on their network", claiming that "most well-crafted acceptable-use policies prohibit all personal E-mail and IM correspondence", and advising you to block specific sites and monitor employees Internet usage.  

If you take this author's advice, what message are you sending to employees about what your organizations truly values? Is this the type of organization you'd prefer to work for?

8:38:49 AM    
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