It is important to create a company policy that prohibits employees from abusing their Internet privileges. The Internet has become a business critical tool for most companies and Internet misuse could affect the overall success of a company as much as it influences employee productivity.
More often than not, employees view communication policies as a bureaucratic administration, rather than as an important step to reducing communication costs. Most companies have a communication policy in place that stipulates the use of the telephone or fax machine for personal purposes. Most companies have been slow to include in the policy a section on Internet usage. However, when trying to reduce a company`s communication costs, it is imperative to streamline the usage of the Internet.
Employees have to realise that bandwidth is wasted when they abuse resources. If an employee surfs the Net to plan a holiday during work hours, the result for co-workers is slow access to the Internet, which means an inability to communicate with business partners when it`s critical to reach decisions. This in effect, could hinder an employee`s own personal ability to grow.
To ensure that they get maximum benefit for the money spent on Internet connectivity, companies have the option of implementing company policies. There are two types of policies on Internet usage that could be enforced:
A Social Engineering Policy This policy can be implemented to inform staff that the Web and e-mail should be used primarily as a business tool, and not for excessive personal purposes. Every company needs to encourage a responsible attitude towards e-mail. Employees need to strike a balance between business and private electronic communication, preventing the organisation from having to disallow personal Internet usage all together. This is similar to the understanding between employees and companies regarding personal phone calls. It is important to have disciplinary steps in place should anyone ignore the policy and abuse the system. Also, there are inexpensive means to achieve this technically.
As with any policy it is important that it reflects the business needs and is neither too open nor too restrictive. Companies can be lenient with the enforcement of this policy by only allowing Internet access to certain departments for a specific time during the day. For example, administrative staff might not need to utilise the Internet as part of their job function, but employers might allow access to the Internet during lunch hour.
The goal with the Social Engineering Policy is to educate the company`s "Internet Users" to take into consideration the costs involved both in terms of the cost of connectivity and the loss of productivity.
Technical Policy Companies could start to schedule the delivery of mail messages for larger specified size outside normal working hours. Have policies set in place where internal personnel cannot send or receive e-mail if there is no requirement for it. This is possible with Proxy/ Caching servers featuring abilities to streamline and localise content of delivery and also time of day of usage. While many companies implement size limits to prevent e-mail abuse, it is important to note that e-mail was not created as a replacement for file transfer protocols.
The technical policy could also include security issues such as the content filtering of Web pages. Employers could filter out pornography sites or anything that is not specific to a person`s job function. There are also security solutions available with functionality such as content filtering on e-mails, or detection of viruses. This will also help prevent "spam" or unsolicited mail, which will contribute to bandwidth misuse.
To conclude, as with the implementation of any policy within a company, it is important to take all the employees` views into consideration. The idea of "we respect the individual" should form the foundation of the policy. Negotiate with your workforce the use of the Internet during work hours and aim to change your employees` mindset that the Internet is an utilisation tool adding to the success of your business
Share
Editorial contacts