Dear J.T. & Dale: A good friend of mine at work just got fired for instant-messaging on the job. Isn’t that stupid? I mean, how is that any different from me taking a personal call at work? In fact, I would think IMing is better because it’s free and it takes less time to respond to. – Katie J.T.: It’s clear your friend’s employer felt her IMing was affecting her work. This is actually a big source of frustration for employers today. Between personal calls, Internet use and IMing, companies are feeling like they are being taken advantage of.
Dale: There’s an old story about Cardinal Spellman, from when he was Archbishop of New York, who had an assistant come into his office one morning and say, “Your Eminence, there’s a man at the door who insists that he is Jesus Christ. What should we do?†And the Cardinal looked up from his work and replied, “Well, look busy.†I’d all but forgotten that story because the concept of looking busy to impress the boss has all but disappeared. Good managers hire people who don’t need watching, and find ways to assess output, not busyness. So I’m with you, Katie. Trying to run a business like it’s a kindergarten class takes more time than whatever time it is supposed to save.
J.T.: Wait. There’s a bigger issue here than productivity: security. Did you know the instant message you send from work could put your company’s computer network at risk? I did some research and learned that IM systems from some of the providers lack basic security features needed to protect corporate networks. So, until the day comes that we are certain IMing won’t crash the company servers, and companies decide to stop worrying how to keep their employees from cheating them out of work time.
Dale: Now you’re going to scare more managers, and scared managers become bureaucrats running around letting policies fall from the sky. A lot of messaging is moving over to cell phones, where the office system is not involved, and if the ones on computer are a danger to the company’s system, get the IT people to investigate and let employees understand the risks.
August 13th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I really enjoy your column. But I gotta disagree with Dale on this one…and expect you’ll get lots of emails pro and con.
Besides the fact that it was a friend who wrote you (not the person who got fired, meaning you got second-hand information)…besides the fact that the firing was allegedly for IMing, not texting on a cellphone…and besides the fact that I agree about bureacracy and bosses wasting too much time on petty stuff…you need to listen to JT on this one for security reasons, even if you don’t seem to care about “productivity”.
I ran the IT department for a small business. We’re talking 50 people more or less. As part of the business, we ran a public computer lab. IMing became a huge problem. We’d get viruses left and right on certain computers. We’d have attacks on our servers. So we removed IM options from the public computers and locked them down. That solved that part of the problem.
As far as staff computers went, we had an all-staff meeting that went over the problem and how IMing had to stop. Everyone stopped…except for the staff who were causing problems on staff computers in the first place. We could trace what was happening and talked repeatedly to the 3-4 people involved. That worked. Not.
You know why? Because IMing was a huge part of their lives. They had excuses, of course. “I have to keep in touch with my family.” “I’m waiting for my doctor to contact me.” “I’m checking on yada yada yada.” Worse, they also believed that they knew enough to protect against viruses and other attacks. Even when we showed them how their actions directly caused problems, they still kept it up because *they* had decided it was “harmless”.
Even with a new policy against IMing, they still kept it up.
One of them? Her IM name was “tits45″…give me a break!!! And you can guess the content of her workplace/work time IMs
Another was IMing friends and family at least 3.5 to 4 hours a day! And she should be paid full time why? Oh…she was also the worst offender when it came to viruses.
So one Saturday morning we came in and locked down their computers. No more IMing for them.
So what happens? The two worst offenders go to other people’s machines…which we hadn’t locked down because they weren’t screwing up…and started IMing from those! So…we locked down EVERY staff computer. Any time someone needed to not just install a new program, but to do anything not covered by the lockdown, we had to go and set them up. Plus, since we provided remote access to staff because of their job duties, we had to deal with the offenders trying to remotely IM.
In other words…it wasn’t the occasional IM. It was the problems caused by constant or irresponsible IMing. And, no, talking to them didn’t work. And the staff time they wasted…both theirs and ours…was significant. And this is in a business with only 50 people.
So, to Dale…don’t assume IMing is just a casual thing that bosses are obsessing over. If a person got fired for it, there’s a darn good chance there was a policy against it based on past experience that the employee was aware of and/or the employee got warned not to do it any more and didn’t pay attention because the employee decided it was “harmless”.
Oh…regarding productivity vs “busyness”? One of those worst offenders was the agency bookkeeper…and one month during this IM adventure our monthly paychecks were late because she was “too busy” to get the payroll information to the accountants on time. Yikes!
So please, Dale, don’t immediately side with the employee about IMing. Particularly since it was a friend who wrote you, not the employee herself.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:04 am
One point I can add here regards company policy. Some have very strict policy about personal communications in the workplace; others do not. Take cell phone use for example. The company I’m currently working for considers cell phone use a potentially terminable act. The company I previously worked for had little problem with it in justifiable circumstance. Basically, familiarize yourself with such policy before taking liberties.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
“…like a personal call”?? Either way, an extended conversation is certainly not appropriate around here. Two or three minutes should be enough to take care of anything, including, “I’m at work; I’ll talk to you later.”
August 16th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I had 2 thoughts on this - first, that the IMing was simply the last straw in a series of not-doing-the- job actions & second, that perhaps the young lady’s job was dealing with customers in some way. As a customer is is extremely frustrating to be ignored while the emplyee (unually young) attends to his or her personal communications.
July 26th, 2014 at 11:06 pm
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