Human Resource Management and the Internet: Challenge and/or Threat to Workplace Productivity?

Abstract

Throughout the last few years, the Internet has become a common tool at the workplace. Companies, from different activity sectors, were quick to embrace the opportunities and potential given by the Internet and put them to good use to achieve their goals. However, despite having contributed to the efficiency of employees, by allowing them to have immediate access to information on a variety of topics and facilitating communication all over the world, it also contributed to never before encountered concerns to employers. Initial research into the use of the Internet for personal reasons during working hours stated that such use had a negative impact on productivity. The reasoning for such was that employees would be wasting time which could be used to further their work, thus possibly making them unproductive. On the other hand, recent research has shown the Internet to be quite valuable to productivity. Studies have shown that not only is the Internet a priceless tool which aids workers to accomplish their designated tasks, but also when used reasonably, allows those who are working to have moments of relaxation. This contributes to improvements in concentration and ultimately in productivity. Due to this ambiguity and the absence of works on this theme in Portugal, a decision was made to base this study on the impact of the Internet usage on productivity.