EB is right. It's cool as long as they know.

uncool. should discuss it out front and not stealth around

San Diego, California-based Websense Inc. said Wednesday that it estimates that U.S. companies lose US$63 billion a year in lost productivity due to the Net, which the company claims is a "major distraction" for employees.

Websense, which is a software maker, not a research company, said it based its estimate on the U.S. Census Bureau's average U.S. salary and an hour of work lost per week due to employees' personal Internet use.

ref:

Agree - needs must

I Have Worked as a chef for 10 years before i joined this industry. I have always lived by You are here to Work. You aren;t Paid to Fuck around. You have break times where if you choose to fuck around thats your own porogitive. but for that other time in a day you are working. If you don;t have something productive to do then ask. Because there is alwas something.

Uncool and against the law if the Worker is not informed about it.
Everything gatered against him in that way is not valide.

That mindset is lost with most of today's youth.

Depends but like employer is realy not cool to be monitored

IANAL, however in the United States this is incorrect, if the employer owns the equipment. Even private email (hotmail/yahoo/gmail) is fair game if it is captured on an employers equipment.

Most people think that employers intercepting your private communications is paramount to an illegal wiretap, problem is there is barely any case law to even try and fight with.

50 employees fucking off

I think it's a bit extreme. But if you're going to do it,
there needs to be full disclosure and a clear set of
guidelines re what is un/acceptable online use.

My policy would be that as long as what was required to be done for the day was accomplished I wouldn't have a problem with employees using the net on short breaks but I would let them know they were subject to monitoring to preserve a "blame trail" lest anyone do something illegal or harrassing using my computers.

Monitoring without them knowing was one of the best choices i ever made. You really just can't fucking trust anyone to do work non-stop if you leave them alone for long periods of time. Legal problems with not telling them ? Fuck that shit ... you can always just find something else to fire them for anyway. What they don't know ...

:2 cents:

P.S. I Definitely recommend this for anyone who allows their employees to use chat programs during work.

Phone taps are nice and cheap as well. Depending on your phone setup i guess =)

Let me clarify on that statement, as it is rather deceptive - it is probable that 'criminal' actions captured by an employer might be treated completely different.


A friend of mine last year was fired for statements made through personal email (hotmail) that was captured on his employers computer equipment, the company did not have any policy on computer monitoring, he was never informed that he might be monitored, nor signed anything to that effect.
However when he filed for unemployment all of the emails captured were presented, and accepted as evidense against him and he was turned down for unemployment.

A lawyer told us that a company doesn't need a written policy, or even a verbal policy to monitor employee's if they own the equipment, ISP accounts , connections etc, and told us most people should treat working at computers at work, just like other aspects of their life - don't say anything private you wouldn't want anyone to know.

Not cool, but sometimes you need to ! :thumbsup

You have to assume your employee's are going to use the internet to fuck off. It's like putting a tv with 1000 channels in the middle of someones desk and saying dont watch it.