There are many statements online that say productivity is lowered at work because employees surf the Internet. In most cases these statements have been used by individuals that sell Internet filters. On the other hand we also have different studies that show us that most people will not have a problem with their work results if they do personal surfing as well. My personal belief is that this “personal surfing” actually eases work and makes the individual work better. The problem appears when individuals tend to rather surf the net instead of doing their job but if they can get the job done, why attack this extra surfing?

The recent case that brought attention to the media is in UK. 9 office workers were fired after the company discovered that they spent up to 2 hours a day on eBay. OK, I totally agree, two hours per day is a long time to be spending on eBay but that “up to” stated is very circumstantial. There is no news related to whether this impacted their job performance or if the windows just remained open on eBay or they were actually browsing the web site. The defense on the other hand seems very strange. It seems that the workers are represented by a union and that union is attacking the employer for putting temptation in the way of workers. It is the employer’s fault that they did not filter out eBay. OK! That is stupid in my view! The employer will probably win, but only because of an improper defense.