I noticed yesterday that Griffith Uni has provided a plasma screen in the library window for students and staff to watch the Olympics, but when I questioned both my Griffith students and later on my ACU students, most said they were too busy with things like paid work, study and parental responsibilities to be following the Olympics closely. That’s obviously an unscientific sample, but it does (I think) go to show that not everyone immerses themselves in the Olympics coverage. I don’t necessarily object to a bit of it - I had some fun watching some of the Sydney Olympics on a trip to Melbourne (as you do!), but I’m too busy to pay any attention this time around - because of paid work and study (looming deadline for second draft of PhD thesis). I did notice that Stephanie Rice had won another gold medal, but I think only because she’d been the subject of discussion here around privacy issues.
But I imagine that consulting ratings figures would demonstrate that a lot of people do watch a lot of the Olympics, and that criticism of Yahoo!7’s online coverage probably implies that some people want to watch some from the office. In that vein, it was interesting to see an article in the Fin last week about various large organisations more or less agreeing with Bob Hawke and his comments on the Americas Cup - that “anyone who sacks an employee for checking results on the intertubes or for taking a sickie after staying up late during the Olympics is a mug”. Managers of various companies were quoted saying they didn’t have a problem with employees looking at online coverage provided they managed their own workload. That raises the broader question of policing internet access at work. My view on that is that if someone spends all day looking at websites, there’s probably either a problem with workflow or they’re not a terribly motivated employee after all. My feeling is that most employees exercise a fair degree of self-discipline in achieving work goals, and that’s backed up by a lot of studies of working from home. One anecdote I have is of the Queensland Public Service in 2000, when I was doing a consultancy in house for a few weeks. One day I was in the office was the American presidential election - and I suppose because a lot of public servants are political junkies, a whole open office was full of people hitting refresh on CNN. Most of these people were doing project or research work, and not required to do customer service as such, and I didn’t hear that any deadlines had been missed - folks were just making up the time later, or building that desire to obsess over election results into their work planning.
Some organisations are now not requiring employees to account for hours at all, but rather for results. There’s an obvious danger of workload creep here, but I think generally self-management and maximum autonomy at work should be encouraged. Any boss who thinks that all their employees require constant surveillance and close supervision is probably a mug themselves, or they’ve hired the wrong employees and sent the wrong messages (which leads us to the same conclusion).
Elsewhere: Self-described “sports refusenik” Helen posts on the Olympics.
Mark,
to add to your small and unrepresentative sample: I watched women’s (young girl’s) gymnastics to day for 20 mins while lunch munching: last two US girls doing their “floor routine”, then 3 Chinese girls; crescendo of emotion as the Chinese clinched the team gold medal. The artistry and precision was breathtaking. GOLD for gymnastics!!!
Elsewhere: Self-described “sports refusenik” Helen posts on the Olympics.
My wife remarked on (and was very dissapointed by) the distinct lack of enthusiasm amongst the Australian population compared to Japan. Whilst saturation coverage features on the TV news, it doesn’t figure in conversations in offices, the street, the office, whereas in her homeland for two weeks it permeated every part of life.
Granted sporting events are the sole occassion on which Japanese feel they can celebrate their nationality publically without invoking unwelcome thoughts of events best left unmentioned, but don’t Australian history books, media and government keep telling us how important sport is to Australian pride.
Afterall, aren’t we taught in high school how the Australian cricket team preempted federation. Aren’t the huge amounts of money poured into the AIS justified by their effect on national pride? And advertisers and the companies that employ them are extending huge amounts of their money on the assumption that they are.
It’s one thing for commentators with nothing at stake to underestimate the Australian public on issues like climate change and petrol prices and misestimate on issues like sport, but it is far more worrying when the people who have a personal stake on accurately gauging the people get it wrong. Afterall, a politician that does that loses office (as we clearly have seen) and a company wastes lots of money on ads that don’t appeal.
Maybe we’re just a wonderously complex people and too hard to gauge. I’d like to believe that. It is a pleasant option to beleive in.
So I shall.
Most watched.1.Replays of medal presentations.
2.Replays of swimming wins for Aussies and medal presentations.
3.Replays of gymnastics medal presentations.
Not necessarily by popular demand.
At least Japan would broadcast the Judo and I wouldn’t be forced to watch Mammadli’s beautiful ippons http://www.judovision.org/?p=1779 on a crappy squashed aspect stream.
Thanks for the link Mark!
No problemo Helen!
You know what’s really infuriating? Being able to read all but the final little paragraph in my feed reader. I just hate having to click through when it seems so unnecessary.
Please don’t put the more tag right before the final paragraph (if you must put it in at all). Worried about losing those precious ad impressions? Learn how to put ads in your feed. I’d much prefer that than having to click through.
I might be wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone.
Simon, it might be better to have placed that comment on the open thread. But since you’ve made it. We’ve had an in house style rule about any posts that go over 3 paras going over a fold (or 2 long paras) for a very long time. The rationale is to highlight a variety of posts on the front page. FWIW, our stats show a lot more people coming here that way than read the posts via bloglines or google reader. So while we try to be responsive to feedback, I think this is a “can’t please all of the people all of the time” moment. Sorry!
A desk for every person and a person for every desk. A PC for every desk and a person to be at every PC. Every worker in the factory to be at their station on the line.
It’s a cultural hangover and the recipe for presenteeism. In the Olden Days, people would just gasbag when the tea lady came around, or have the long (and liquid…) lunches. Now you can sit at your screen, have all the appearance of working, and potentially be doing nothing of the sort. I’m not sure most individuals have more than 4-6 hours /day of high quality, high effectiveness brain-time in them. Unless you’re in a process role where your output can be easily measured (widgets made, receipts processed, customers served) the hours per day work is just padded with down time between more productive periods…
Last year my organisation installed a little time-monitoring widget on everyone in head office’s PC, that pops up a warning to you every hour to take a 5-10 minute break. The purpose is stop people working on their PC for hours on end, getting RSI, and costing the place a packet in sick time/workers comp. Its had the wonderfully liberating side effect though of culturally legitimizing time not spent sitting looking busy at one’s PC. Fortunately there are loads of breakout areas and quiet rooms you can disappear to go work in as well.
Hi Kim, that was a quick reply. It is possible to have the more tag in operation for the front page and still retain the full text of each post in the feed. See Settings->Reading. It would be most appreciated.
Just to keep things somewhat on topic as well, I’ll add that it’s not just employees that like to destroy productivity with the Olympics. One of the owners of the company I work for spent the entire afternoon watching the opening ceremony at work on Friday. I guess it’s nice to be boss.
Nuthin’, not even the Oh-lympics, can replace the simplicity and honesty of a ciggie break. Find out the latest results (they’ll be on the evening news anyway if you really have to watch); stretch the eyes and the legs every hour or so, as per OHS suggestions; find out what’s happening in the real world.
“Whaddayafuggenmean me contract’s not being renewed!?”
“Any boss who thinks that all their employees require constant surveillance …”
There is some truth to that but unfortunately theft from employers is a very real and serious problem, at least in places I’ve worked in and according to some small business friends of mine. When the cats away the mice will play …
I hope you soon get a tudor bonnet for the doctoral marathon, Mark, that’s the main thing.
It would be easier to avoid the Olympics during the work day if the Swimming Finals were on in the evening like they should be when the Olympics is being held in our area of the world. Thanks NBC. Hopefully due to the midday heat this won’t happen with the athletics so much.
Also, people who are really interested in sports don’t want to watch sport that isn’t live any more. With the internet, they just won’t accept non-live sport. I can see a vast seachange in the way TV networks cover events like the Olympics soon, with viewers at home choosing which event they want to see. Most people I know would rather watch an Olympic Football or Basketball match in its entirety live than see highlights packages of same interspersed between the gymnastics or diving.
I have to confess I am just not into sports. I joke that I am boycotting watching the Olympics in sympathy with the Tibetan cause, but to be honest I wouldn’t watch it anyway.
Problem for me is, the types of things I *am* interested in, just don’t get put on the telly much (anything to do with religion, Islam in particular).
So… no problem with workplace slacking here. (Except for slacking to read up on LP of course hehe).
Simon, that might be true if we were using the very latest version of the WP CMS, but we are not, and we have no immediate intention to upgrade to a CMS that is more bloated than we require. What our Options–>
SettingsReading admin-page tells us is this:Our use of the [!–more–] feature on the front page long pre-dates our adoption of ads, BTW, so perhaps you could retract your unfounded assumptions there? We make no apologies for encouraging people to come to the site to read the full article so that they are more likely to join the discussion.
Yes, I think for a lot of people, things that we are interested in rarely get much of a run on TV. If you are interested in anything other than mainstream music for example.
On the other hand, if you happen to be interested in smug, humourless individuals there seems to be an infestation of smugness on TV at the moment.
“On the other hand, if you happen to be interested in smug, humourless individuals there seems to be an infestation of smugness on TV at the moment.”
If smugness offends you then I suggest you had better stop watching all those shows with politicians and notable commentators as guests.
Forget about workplace productivity, what about blogging productivity? Only two posts in the past 24 hours, the last one 21 hours ago! Lift your game LPers
BTW, I seem to recall Hawkie using the word ‘bum’ rather than ‘mug’. And wearing 3 Ken Done jackets one over the other. Do I remember correctly?
“Any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum.”
Blogs like LP have a much greater impact on my workplace productivity than the olympics ever will.
I suspect the Olympics is not as “important” now as it was in 2000. From memory Athens 2004 didn’t excite too many people and this hasn’t done much either. The Brisbane EkkA is on at the moment and the media is reporting near record daily crowds.
They wouldn’t be getting record crowds if everyone in South East Queensland who wasn’t at work was sitting at home, glued to the Plasma with a finger on the remote for the PVR or Foxtel box watching the unfolding events from China.
C.L. at 14 - thanks! The opportunity to play dress ups is of course a prime motivating factor!