Who hasn't sneakily browsed the web for personal reasons
while at work? It's a given, and businesses have put in place fair
use policies to guide staff as to what is acceptable web behaviour
and what is strictly off limits.
Combined with blacklists of offending websites, in many ways
such policies have proved pretty adequate, bar the occasional faux
pas when very private photos accidentally find their way to
everyone in the global e-mail directory.
But this cosy state of affairs is set to change as a new
generation of staff join companies. As Dennis Szerszen points out
in
The productivity challenge: Working with the iPod generation,
"The iPod generation will expect a certain degree of leniency when
it comes to using technology for leisure purposes while at
work."
New graduates have grown up with instant messaging, memory
sticks, digital cameras and MP3 players. They will expect to use
such technology at work, and arguments for banning downloads of
podcasts over the company network, for example, are going to be
harder to make stick as bandwidth prices fall.
There are already ways to minimise the risks, so rather than
stopping the use of these devices, there is a strong case for the
IT director to embrace them to create more effective ways of
working. For example, a USB memory stick could easily hold a user's
entire corporate desktop configuration, licence keys, or even a
one-time password generator. And a podcast could be used as a
channel to distribute corporate training.
With suitable software, perhaps one day you will see an iPod
user viewing offline documents, newspapers, or a downloaded copy of
Computer Weekly on the device. It certainly beats sitting next to
someone on the daily commute whose idea of fun is listening to Iron
Maiden at full blast on little white headphones.
More information:
Working with the iPod generation
Have your say
Do you agree? If you have an opinion about this or any article
in Computer Weekly, e-mail
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk