Young workers push employers for wider web access

Chicago
The Economic Times
Ryan Tracy thought he'd entered the Dark Ages when he graduated college and arrived in the working world. His employer blocked access to Facebook, Gmail and other popular Internet sites. He had no wireless access for his laptop and often ran to a nearby cafe on work time so he could use its Wi-Fi connection to send large files.

Sure, the barriers did what his employer intended: They stopped him and his colleagues from using work time to goof around online. But Tracy says the rules also got in the way of legitimate work he needed to do as a scientific analyst for a health care services company.

"It was a constant battle between the people that saw technology as an advantage, and those that saw it as a hindrance," says the 27-year-old Chicagoan, who now works for a different company.

He was sure there had to be a better way. It's a common complaint from young people who join the work force with the expectation that their bosses will embrace technology as much as they do. Then some discover that sites they're supposed to be researching for work are blocked. Or they can't take a little down time to read a news story online or check their personal e-mail or social networking accounts. In some cases, they end up using their own Internet-enabled smart phones to get to blocked sites, either for work or fun.

So some are wondering: Could companies take a different approach, without compromising security or workplace efficiency, that allows at least some of the online access that younger employees particularly crave?

"It's no different than spending too much time around the water cooler or making too many personal phone calls. Do you take those away? No," says Gary Rudman, president of GTR Consulting, a market research firm that tracks the habits of young people. "These two worlds will continue to collide until there's a mutual understanding that performance, not Internet usage, is what really matters."

There is, of course, another side of the story, from employers who worry about everything from wasted time on the Internet to confidentiality breaches and liability for what their employees do online. Such concerns have to be taken especially seriously in such highly regulated fields as finance and health care, says Nancy Flynn, a corporate consultant who heads the Ohio-based ePolicy Institute.