Regardless of the sector or part of your company, the pursuit of productivity is unanimous among businesses. Often, managers have done everything possible to help employees achieve greater productivity and, consequently, improve the company's results , but still, objectives are not achieved. But why does this happen? Companies end up forgetting a very important factor for business productivity: internet access. Blocking websites can make all the difference for businesses that want to increase productivity and deliver superior market performance.
Some management practices can help employees increase their focus and perform their tasks more intelligently, but it's not always possible to achieve the results expected by business managers. The internet, while essential, is a tool fraught with threats and pitfalls that can destroy your business's productivity without you even realizing it.
Regardless of the activity performed, it's very common for employees to become distracted by resources and tools available in the digital environment and fail to deliver the productivity expected by their leaders. Examples include social media, e-commerce, personal email, entertainment websites, and, in the worst cases, pornography.
It's crucial for managers to have efficient solutions that help maintain more assertive control over everything that happens online while employees are available to the company.
Productivity in the workplace
In practical terms, it's quite simple to determine the necessary productivity a company needs to achieve, taking into account expected demand and available resources . This calculation is very simple, but the reality is quite different. There are several formulas and methods that can be applied to obtain this information; see this content on the subject:
However, we must remember that in our daily lives, we deal with people. And these people have their own characteristics, needs, and challenges—aspects that can directly impact your work results.
Knowing employee productivity makes it easier to determine which factors are impacting the company's productivity and preventing expected results from being achieved.
The indiscriminate use of the internet, in addition to posing a great risk to the company's security in terms of information leaks , data confidentiality and device integrity, is also a major villain when it comes to productivity.
Simply put, productivity is the result obtained by a piece of equipment or an employee using all available resources. Within companies, productivity directly impacts profitability, as the more productive the business, the better the results. Blocking websites can offer many advantages when business results are linked to employee productivity.
Low productivity is a factor that managers can easily observe. In addition to poor employee performance, business results will quickly be impacted by poor performance . It's crucial that managers have complete control over everything that happens within the company. To achieve this, it's important to pay attention to certain aspects, such as:
Have complete knowledge of your entire team
Identifying your skills and competencies can help you apply them to your business and your employees . For example, an employee who is more extroverted and communicative may not deliver good results in areas that require more isolated and focused work. It's important to consider these skills when assigning tasks and roles within the business.
Clear and achievable goals
Of course, every company wants to achieve substantial growth, but these established goals must be realistic and achievable so that they do not discourage the team and do not result in excessive demands.
Establish some criteria
If your goal is to determine whether your team is being productive or not, it's important to establish some analysis criteria to identify potential flaws and areas for improvement.
Count on consolidated data
Performance reports help managers determine how employees' activities are progressing. They allow them to evaluate each employee's performance and investigate the reasons behind declining productivity.
What can harm your company's results?
When noticing signs of low productivity among your team members, it's important for managers to conduct a thorough and thorough analysis of the reasons behind this impact . Below are the main reasons that lead to a drop in productivity and impact your business's results:
- Job dissatisfaction: It's natural for certain factors to cause employees to be dissatisfied with their work, and this is one of the main reasons for decreased productivity. It's essential that managers conduct an in-depth analysis of the potential drivers of this dissatisfaction . If they can effectively identify these reasons, it will be easier to establish them within the business processes.
- Communication issues: To avoid workplace problems, it's important that communication is clear and objective . Most workplace problems could have been avoided if communication between managers and teams had been more clearly established . Good communication helps avoid complex issues and contributes to greater business productivity.
- Structural problems: possible problems in the company's physical environment, such as tables, chairs, devices, tools, among others, can generate dissatisfaction and, consequently, reduce business productivity .
- Distractions: This includes anything that can hinder employees from performing their tasks, such as unnecessary meetings, excessive email and phone contact, side conversations, and constant interruptions. All of these can undermine your business's productivity and directly impact your company's bottom line.
- Digital distractions: here we talk about the internet and its countless pitfalls. Accessing social media, personal email, visiting online stores, streaming platforms, and other content can cause workers to stop performing their duties and become distracted by tasks unrelated to what's truly important: completing the tasks they were hired to do.
Brazilian productivity is among the worst in the world, with a worker in Brazil producing in one hour what a worker in the United States can produce in 15 minutes . This demonstrates the many factors that lead employees to neglect their work and focus on tasks unrelated to the company.
A company's team is assembled according to its needs . If a business has a specific number of tasks to perform, it hires a number of employees compatible with that demand. If these employees spend 20% of their time accessing content and tools unrelated to their work, results will naturally decline.
Faced with this problem, what would be the smartest solution: hiring a new employee or establishing methods and solutions to help current employees achieve the productivity expected by the business?
Of course, hiring new employees generates costs for the company and may not always deliver the expected results. Blocking websites helps prevent employees from accessing this type of content while they should be performing the tasks assigned by managers.
Having a blocking tool will help your company have more assertive control over everything that happens in the digital environment during working hours , and prevent employees from interrupting their activities to solve personal problems or become distracted by this type of content.
Another major advantage this type of website blocking can provide is the protection of company data and devices. Just as the internet is full of distractions, it's also rife with traps and threats that can cause immense damage to the company. Digital security is a priority among businesses, especially given the risks that data breaches can pose to the organization.
5 tips to increase productivity by blocking websites on the internet
As we've seen, there's a wide range of content and access that can impact your business's productivity. To help you, we've outlined five types of blocks that need to be implemented to prevent your employees from suffering from low productivity and loss of focus during work hours:
Social media blocking
Social media has become almost universally popular among Brazilians, being used by the majority of people. While they're a very interesting tool for individuals and businesses, social media is a true productivity black hole. How many times have you accessed a social network and spent much more time than expected scrolling through the feed and random content? Blocking this tool will help your employees stay focused on what's truly important to the company.
Personal email blocking
Besides being a major distraction for employees, personal email can be a gateway for various cyber threats . Several scams can be carried out via email, such as phishing. In this type of cyberattack, the cybercriminal creates a fake email to trick the victim into providing confidential information or downloading malicious applications.
Streaming platform blocking
Streaming platforms are becoming increasingly popular, and because of their ease of access, they can also be a major detriment to company productivity. It's very common for some employees to access these platforms during work hours to distract themselves, causing delays or failing to perform their tasks efficiently.
Blocking certain types of downloads
Many cyberattacks begin with the download of malicious applications or files, which may contain Trojans and can facilitate the entry of cybercriminals, resulting in information leaks, device lockouts, infected machines, financial scams, and more.
Blocking websites without security protocol
E-commerce has brought many conveniences to our daily lives, allowing us to shop anywhere, anytime. However, many cybercriminals clone well-known e-commerce sites like Casas Bahia, Americanas, Submarino, and others. Through these sites, they can collect personal, financial, and other information. Furthermore, these sites may display banners or fake ads that, when opened, download malicious files to your device.
Blocking pornographic and violent content
Even though it's an inconceivable stance, there are still many cases where employees use the company's internet to access pornographic websites. It's important to block this type of content not only to ensure greater productivity but also to prevent any type of inappropriate behavior in the workplace.
Blocking websites and gaming platforms
Like social media and entertainment sites, online games can be incredibly distracting, causing employees to stop performing their tasks and lose focus on business priorities. Another problem with this type of content is the risk to data security. Most of these sites are riddled with traps that can lead to very dangerous and damaging cyberattacks.
Count on the help of the best tools on the market
Manually blocking websites can be a real challenge , especially when the company has multiple devices and employees working remotely. Furthermore, this type of blocking often fails to deliver the expected results and can be easily bypassed by users.
For this reason, it's important to have an efficient and intelligent tool that helps your company block inappropriate and dangerous content more assertively. There are solutions on the market that can provide an intuitive dashboard with all the features your business needs for more efficient website blocking , such as tools like pfSense , DNS Filter , and Lumiun .
With solutions like this, you can manage access to your work environment more comprehensively and increase productivity for your organization.
Until later!
