Wired Workers Benefit From Web

The next time your boss shoots you a cross look for surfing the Internet, hand him or her a copy of a new study by Xylo Inc.

The study found that employees who use the Internet at work are more productive, do better work and feel happier and less stressed.

Here are some specific findings:

* Of those employees who use the Internet at work, an overwhelming 86 percent report that using the Web at work has no negative impact on their jobs and nearly half - 46 percent - say that the Internet helps them to be more productive.

* Among employees who use the Internet at work each day, 74 percent are more likely to report increases in productivity.

* When the Internet is used for personal reasons at work, more than half of the employees - 56 percent - claim it has a positive impact. Some 28 percent cite improvements in the quality of their work, while 28 percent also attribute Internet usage to making them happier or less stressed.

The results are based on responses from more than 1,000 adults surveyed by Wirthlin Worldwide for Xylo in early August.

Gender bender

Being chewed out by a male boss may be traumatic, but being scolded by a female manager is worse.

That’s one finding of a study of gender and discipline at work by Arizona State University School of Management Professor Leanne Atwater and two colleagues. Key findings include:

* Both men and women would prefer being told off by a male boss than a female one.

* Women dislike being disciplined by another woman even more than men do.

* Male bosses dished out more severe discipline than women. They were three times as likely to suspend or fire a subordinate, and only half as likely to give merely a verbal warning.

* Still, when female subordinates were asked whether they felt responsible for their bad behavior, 52 percent said no when a female boss read the riot act - but only 18 percent when the boss was male.

The research is based on interviews with 163 workers from a broad range of jobs who had been disciplined in a variety of ways.

Tone it down, please

Open-plan office design has been fashionable for several years as corporations push the team concept and cost-containment.

While it accomplishes several corporate goals, open-plan design exposes workers to a raft of distractions, ranging from the sound of phones ringing to other workers talking.

So it’s not surprising, perhaps, that a Yankelovich study for the American Society of Interior Designers found that conversational noise was the No. 1 complaint of office workers. An overwhelming 70 percent said they would be more productive if there were fewer noise distractions.

In another study by Armstrong World Industries, 52 percent of workers said that the noise level in their workplace was stressful and 81 percent said they could get more work accomplished if their workplace was quieter.