From an employee’s perspective, what are the pros and cons to cyberloafing while at work? From a management perspective, what are the pros and cons to cyberloafing while at work?
From the point of view of the employee, cyberfloating provides an opportunity to make the day at work enjoyable and therefore, not a day that is feeling dragged because of being hectic. According to some of the employees, the hyper-connections they have may be a big issue to consider. The employee may be called upon to take work home at times. As such, it becomes logical that they handle their personal issues at the workplace (Kim, Del Carmen Triana, Chung, & Oh, 2016) .
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Looking at cyberfloating from the point of view of a manager, it is one way through which an individual has the opportunity to be lazy and unfocused with the tasks at hand. Some of the managers may have a different stance but cyberfloating makes the employee look like she/he does not want to take things seriously at work (Huma, Hussain, Thurasamy, & Malik, 2017) . The notion it creates is that employees have the time to go into other things because they are not assigned enough work by their employers.
Should Jack consider revising the current policy? Should a policy be changed once it is implemented? Will he be sending mixed messages to his employees?
Jack needs to consider implementing a revision of the current policy. The employees and everyone else around him have given him strong opinions that suggest a change of policy would be the best way to go since it promises to change the prospects of Jack and his company. Policies can be changed after implementation especially if they tend to have bad prospects for the company. In fact, policies need a test run to determine their applicability and whether they really serve the good of the company or they would bring bad results for the company in question.
Jack will not be sending mixed messages to the employees as long as the policy is not amended to entirely favor cyberfloating as a practice. The amendments should be minimal and meant to accommodate it probably at a certain time during a workday.
Should all policies be revisited from time to time to see if they are relevant and practical? If so, how often?
Policies should be revisited from time to determine if they are viable, relevant or practical. Revisiting the policies is a good idea since some policies may be retrogressive to the company. Such policies should be changed through amendments or through replacements with other policies based on the culture of the company. The frequency of revisiting the policies can be once after four months or three months, biannually or once in a year. It depends with the culture of the company. But every company needs to revisit its policies at least once after every financial year.
Do you agree that employees deserve some autonomy at work? Do you think retention levels will improve if employees have more autonomy? Justify your response.
Employees deserve to have autonomy at work. They need to believe that their employers trust that they can deliver, micromanagement goes a long way to tell the employee that his/her employer does not trust that he/she can deliver with minimum supervision (Kim, Del Carmen Triana, Chung, & Oh, 2016) . Retention levels can improve greatly if employees have autonomy for various reasons. The first is that employees feel better when they know that their managers and those in management trust in their ability to work by themselves without necessarily being supervised. Employees also want to know that their employers want them to participate fully in the functioning of the company. Employees cannot function properly without their honest input in the daily running of the company. This input is possible if they have autonomy to a certain extent. If employees have time for cyberloafing, does that mean that they need more work to do? Should managers conduct a work flow analysis? What are some options?
Cyberfloating may not necessarily mean that employees need more work to do. At times, they need some ventilation time at work to cool off from the stresses of work. Cyberfloating provides that opportunity for them to regroup and come back to work. Managers need a workflow analysis to determine how work is being conducted in their companies. A workflow analysis goes a long way in helping the managers come up with a proper work structure for the employees.
As a future manager, discuss your internet-usage policy in detail so there is no confusion among the employees.
As a manager, the internet usage policy will be significantly diverted towards work. However, at certain times of the day, like lunch breaks and tea breaks, employees will be allowed to use the internet for their leisure time. during their leisure time, they can browse as much as they want as long as they do not interfere with the internet system of the company.
References
Huma, Z., Hussain, S., Thurasamy, R., & Malik, M. I. (2017). Determinants of cyberloafing: A comparative study of a public and private sector organization. Internet Research, 27 (1), 97-117. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.trident.edu/do
Kim, K., Del Carmen Triana, M., Chung, K., & Oh, N. (2016). When Do Employees Cyberloaf? An Interactionist Perspective Examining Personality, Justice, and Empowerment. Human Resource Management, 55 (6), 1041-1058. doi:doi:10.1002/hrm.21699
