The vice president of human resources at Climpson Industries sent the following recommendation to the company's president."In an effort to improve our employees' productivity, we should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their

The given argument claims that usage of internet applications as recreational activity platforms is affecting the employees’ productivity. If a software which can detect and limit such applications is installed on the workstations of the workers, they will avoid accessing internet and thereby their efforts will be more towards productive tasks. However, I can see few flaws in the plan being proposed by the author.

First of all, it is not true that the recreational activities like gaming, watching movies and listening songs requires internet access. One can easily transfer these files on the workstations and indulge in all these activities without accessing internet. Since the software only detects internet usage, these activities will not get tracked. Hence the ultimate goal for increasing employees’ efforts toward efficient work will not meet.

Secondly, the idea for restricting personal or recreational activities on internet is vague. No description has been provided like which web applications will be restricted and which will be still allowed to access. Sometimes internet usage can be of paramount importance rather than having a detrimental effect. Employee might need to search for some information and google can be the only place where he can find answers to his questions. Also, there are some other activities like checking news, booking or cancelling flight tickets which will require immediate internet access. Since users will not have a clear idea if they are accessing valid web pages, there will be an apprehensive working environment which can be a demotivating factor for the better performance of employees.

Thirdly, the restriction of web applications on workstations does not guarantee that employees will not access them. These days every person has a smart phone which supports browsing. Even if they are restricted to use internet on workstations, they might access the same applications like facebook, amazon on their personal phones or tablets. Hence installation of software will not guarantee more working hours.

Clubbing up all the points I can say that installation of software will not be the safest idea to ensure more work hours. However there can be a different approach which can ensure the same result. The company can adopt a policy where an employee has to report about all the tasks that he has done based on hours daily to his superior. The superiors can judge if the time invested for the task is justified. Based on this approach the performance of a company can be monitored as well as improved.