From the unlikeliest of places, a challenge has been mounted to the knee-jerk management belief that workplace Internet surfing represents a dire productivity problem. While companies like Websense have reaped the rewards of their fearmongering, a New York administrative law judge saw it differently today when he recommended the lightest punishment possible in the case of a city worker who surfed the Net at work despite warnings not to.

Administrative Law Judge John Spooner just didn’t think it was that big a deal when he said:

It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.

Spooner, who recommended only a reprimand, pointed out that the city lets workers make personal phone calls so long as it doesn’t affect their performance. In the AP article I read, there was no reference to Spooner pointing out the benefits open web access can bring to a company. But I’m still delighted to see this official and authoritative recognition that the web isn’t the workplace demon Websense would have executives believe it is.

(According to an article in the Boston Herald, “research” by Salary.com suggests that web surfing in the workplace, along with water cooler chit-chat and personal phone calls and errands, cost companies $759 billion per year. This is the kind of scare tactic I’m talking about, presented strictly to draw business to the services companies like Websense and Salary.com provide. These numbers are arrived at by (a) selecting a dollar amount to represent the cost of employing a worker per hour, (b) determining the number of hours spent surfing the web, chatting with colleagues (that is, engaging in knowledge transfer), and running errands, and (c) multiplying a x b. It’s an absurd number that defies logic, since it does not account for the hours spent at home engaged in work activities or the number of hours these employees spend at the office beyond the required eight hours. The real measure is whether work is getting done on time and whether it’s quality work. Period. It still amazes me that these outfits get a free pass on these numbers despite US Department of Labor statistics that continue to show workplace productivity increasing. I keep wondering when somebody in the mainstream press is going to call Websense and Salary.com and their ilk out on these insipid studies.)

I’m not sure what the most severe punishment might have been for the 14-year-old Department of Education veteran, but in some companies, web surfing despite several demands to knock it off can get you fired. In other companies, you’re simply blocked from even making the effort. That is, you’re blocked from doing the equivalent, in Judge Spooner’s estimation, of making a phone call or reading the paper.

I don’t expect this ruling to have any immediate or significant impact on most companies’ policies, not while Websense releases studies that manipulate numbers to give workplace surfing the appearance of a productivity catastrophe. But every journey begins with a single step, and Judge Spooner’s may be the one that setes this journey in motion.

Update: Turns out the NY employee could have faced termination of his employment; Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a city worker earlier this year when he was caught playing solitaire at his computer. Details from C|Net.

According to the New York Daily News, Bloomberg is miffed:

You’re supposed to be working during the work day. The taxpayers are paying you to work. It is not unreasonable to expect you to work…If you are spending hours on the Internet, yes, I think it is inappropriate. Why on Earth do you think you’re hired? Do you think your boss would let you do that? I don’t think so.

In the hearing, though, it was revealed that no work was backed up and that no calls were going unanswered. One has to wonder if the employee in question was taking work home, using his own computer to perform it, or he was working any hours beyond those required by his contract. I know I keep beating the same drum, but work-life integration is a fact of life for knowledge workers these days. Employers need to get up to speed on the concept if they hope to engage the workforce and improve overall performance.