Zoning In on Zoning Out

A relatively recent study in Australia showed that internet surfing helped people maintain their productivity levels.  Employees who spent less than 20% of their time at work surfing had 9% higher productivity levels.  Well, that's fine and dandy, but there are two serious issues.  First, why would I as an employer want to pay for my employees to be doing non-work related activities at work?  Ok, if it boosts their productivity, that's great, so long as they're not soaking up a salary for doing nothing.

Also, those numbers don't add up.  If an employee is wasting 20% of their time surfing, the 9% increase in productivity sure as hell isn't making up for the time not spent working.  Overall, you're better off cutting off the leisure internet surfing and having lower productivity but more total work done.  Workers get less productive if they have to work longer without breaks, but the important thing is that those longer hours still result in more total work done.  Workers only need to take a break when productivity hits zero (after which a skilled PHB can usually still coerce a little extra effort out of them).  Ultimately, I find the study to be completely worthless, and it was probably done by a bunch of lazy workers trying to justify their slacking.