Web surfing costing millions - SFA

Ruu_Old

Read this on rte.ie, how big of a problem is it where ye lot work, or are ye aware of it happening around you?

Irish businesses are facing a growing problem over e-mail and internet abuse by employees, according to the Small Firms Association.

The SFA has warned employers to be more vigilant when it comes to their internet and e-mail policies. The SFA estimated that abuses could be costing Irish employers as much as €575m per year.

According to research by the SFA, the majority of small Irish companies have no anti-abuse policy in place and are vulnerable to this type of abuse.

The assistant director of the SFA, Avine McNally, said that many companies could potentially face future legal action if they fail to have adequate safeguards in place to protect their staff, customers, and the general public from this problem.

She added it is vital for companies to put in place a comprehensive e-mail and internet abuse policy, which sets out rules for personal use, and prohibits access to offensive material.

rediguana

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rediguana

If you give people access to the internet at work, they will work less and surf more. Nothing can change this.

I used to work in a job where surfing was against the rules but people could still do it. The result? People surfed the net but kept it hidden from the bosses. Occasionally someone would be caught and an email would be circulated reminding employees of the rules. This led to people being more careful so as to minimise their chances of getting caught.

muppetkiller

Depends on your job ...I couldn't work anywhere without boards.ie

damnyanks

Generally found I was too busy to use the internet. I'd take a 5 minute break to read the news the odd time but if I spent any serious time doing anything on the internet i'd probably just be at my desk even longer

DonkeyStyle \o/

The SFA estimated that abuses could be costing Irish employers as much as €575m per year.

How?
Is this a (questionable) measure of lost productivity? or are they actually "facing legal action" a lot?

is_that_so

12 minutes X say €10 per hour X 7 hours X 5 days = €70 X 48 weeks = €3360 per employee p.a. and you can see where they are coming from. In my own experience it's a lot more than 10 minutes. But as long as the work is getting done the company can't really complain about surfing. The bigger worry is the other stuff floating around - emails etc. As mentioned there is serious potential for legal problems, especially sexual discrimination.

Uuuh Patsy

The next report they do will be about the cost of employees having a chat about the weather or the big match at the weekend or god forbid how your family is.

These people have lost the plot. Live to Work or Work to Live People?

They should just go out and employ robots, or bugger off to China, if they this is really an issue. This is the kinda sh*t that has made me decide to get the f*ck out of this kip of a country. Its turned into a miserable kip altogether!

smemon

Uuuh Patsy wrote:

The next report they do will be about the cost of employees having a chat about the weather or the big match at the weekend or god forbid how your family is.

These people have lost the plot. Live to Work or Work to Live People?

They should just go out and employ robots, or bugger off to China, if they this is really an issue. This is the kinda sh*t that has made me decide to get the f*ck out of this kip of a country. Its turned into a miserable kip altogether!

agreed. It's impossible to measure or predict what effect it can have.

perhaps employee's loyalty and good faith is increased if their company has a lax policy on web surfing... that could save training costs, decrease staff turnover and increase morale

seamus

Without internet access, people would spend more time chatting around the coffee machine/water cooler, or spend more time reading the paper on the toilet.

There are a couple of keys things here:
1. The vaue of the internet as a research tool. I waste a lot of time surfing the web in work, but at the same time, it's an absolutely critical tool for my work. Without it, my productivity would be astronomically lower. That's the nature of my job.
2. If you actively restrict employees' access to the internet (while having a live internet link), they *will* attempt to find ways around it. This introduces an unstable element from within, and yet *another* security concern for network administrators - What damage will someone do in their attempts to gain access, and how many passwords may be compromised. Among other concerns. Give people internet access, and you can control the content, and then largely the threat - if people realise that they can't get to porn in work (but they can get to boards.ie, for example), they're not likely to attempt to subvent your security.

I always find this kind of "survey" unreliable, as they can only attempt to estimate how much time employees spend surfing for personal purposes. The need for email and internet policies is critical, but phrasing it as they have will only serve to scare employers off from adopting the internet as a serious business tool.

TempestSabre

Its just a some noise to make people who like to be seen, get seen. How much time and money was wasted on figuring this out and putting out to all the media.

the_syco

Meh. I spend about 60% of the time I'm at work on the net. Its all good.
10% boards.ie
2% security sites
48% googling some weird problem that one of the public has...

Another 20% is spent talking to people, and the final 20% is breaks, walking around, or just chillin'.

Yeh! the biggest waste of time is the "long hours culture" where people stay late and work weekends etc.

In many cases they just spread the work over longer hours to impress the boss. I'd much rather work fewer hours (for the same pay) than wait for the clock to say it's time to leave :rolleyes: .

Not possible in my present job, As I have to be present for a fixed number of hours .

People who have flexible hours can be far more productive than those on fixed.

As already said, these surveys are just some statistician justifying their existiance and to give some management organization ammunition to screw their staff a bit at the next pay round.

rick_fantastic

proxy authentication using squid and content filtering using dans guardian (linux tools)

this removes the ability to look at porn and web based email. we dont block anything else.

we publish reports on all employees internet usage and i mean all employees even managing director (fairs fair)

this has increased productivity in the company tenfold and we got nice bonuses for implementing it!

Uuuh Patsy

rick_fantastic wrote:

proxy authentication using squid and content filtering using dans guardian (linux tools)

this removes the ability to look at porn and web based email. we dont block anything else.

we publish reports on all employees internet usage and i mean all employees even managing director (fairs fair)

this has increased productivity in the company tenfold and we got nice bonuses for implementing it!

So will this report show you as piss farting around on boards this morning. I am assuming the "ten fold" statement to be complete twaddle.

rick_fantastic

we kept records of what people did online for 6 months before we started publishing the reports. this was all outlined in employee handbook that we kept these records.

when we calculated the average time that people spent on internet over the next six month period when the reports were published the average drop in time spent on the internet reduced by around 27%

DonkeyStyle \o/

rick_fantastic wrote:

the average drop in time spent on the internet reduced by around 27%

How did this effect the figures on dawdling and lollygagging?

Uuuh Patsy

rick_fantastic wrote:

we kept records of what people did online for 6 months before we started publishing the reports. this was all outlined in employee handbook that we kept these records.

when we calculated the average time that people spent on internet over the next six month period when the reports were published the average drop in time spent on the internet reduced by around 27%

So if I was spending 30 minutes a day on d'internet, I would by your calculatins now be spending 23 minutes. Woopee. Big savings. And at what cost to staff morale knowing your bosses are constantly suspicious of their staff. Fostering a wonderful us and them environment. Do you think the 7 minutes will justify the investment in paying your wages and paying for software etc.... I think your just justifying your existance. Bigger savings if they just cut back on IT staff. Pure overhead off the books

rick_fantastic

Uuuh Patsy wrote:

So if I was spending 30 minutes a day on d'internet, I would by your calculatins now be spending 23 minutes. Woopee. Big savings.

any saving is better than no saving

Uuuh Patsy wrote:

And at what cost to staff morale knowing your bosses are constantly suspicious of their staff. Fostering a wonderful us and them environment.

This is a blanket policy, the management team were the most resistant to the implementation of it. The MD pushed it

Uuuh Patsy wrote:

Do you think the 7 minutes will justify the investment in paying your wages and paying for software etc.... I think your just justifying your existance. Bigger savings if they just cut back on IT staff. Pure overhead off the books

So you think that IT staff are pure overhead. Get back to the dark ages you muppet.

Solair

Some companies are a bit insane regarding IT policy for that kind of thing. I remember being repremanded severely because I had *received* an e-mail from a collegue.

She had had some personal difficulties and I had briefly talked to her over lunch. She decided to pour her heart out to me in an email and I sent a 1 line response saying I'd discuss I'd discuss it later with her.

2 days later my manager called me into an office producing a copy of our "correspondence" and gave me a severe telling off for misusing office resources. Apparently they read every email > 5 lines !

I had a huge row with him about e-mail confidentiality, particularly given the personal nature of the contact and the content of the email clearly showing that someone was having a bit of a crisis.

They were unreasonable about a lot of other things too and I wasn't doing it as a very serious job, so I gave him my statutory minimum notice requirement there and then

From my perspective it meant that it was impossible, for example, for me to complain about my manager to his superior should the need arrise and I just began to feel totally uncomfortable working there. There were security cameras in the canteen, they data taken from login times on the network as evidence of lateness against several people who got nasty letters/emails ...

I just found it an unacceptable atmosphere of monitoring and it actually made me far less productive as I just felt that someone was constantly watching over my shoulder, could be reading my emails, listening to my voicemail (a few times all of my messages were marked "previously listened to" when I had never heard them)

So, I left!

Now working in a much more pleasant environment. I really don't understand that kind of paranoia about staff's behaviour. It's totally counter productive and just gives people an impression that they're not trusted.

I feel it's only 1 step away from asking you to empty your briefcase/handbag or on the way out.

damnyanks

Solair wrote:

Some companies are a bit insane regarding IT policy for that kind of thing. I remember being repremanded severely because I had *received* an e-mail from a collegue.

She had had some personal difficulties and I had briefly talked to her over lunch. She decided to pour her heart out to me in an email and I sent a 1 line response saying I'd discuss I'd discuss it later with her.

2 days later my manager called me into an office producing a copy of our "correspondence" and gave me a severe telling off for misusing office resources. Apparently they read every email > 5 lines !

I had a huge row with him about e-mail confidentiality, particularly given the personal nature of the contact and the content of the email clearly showing that someone was having a bit of a crisis.

They were unreasonable about a lot of other things too and I wasn't doing it as a very serious job, so I gave him my statutory minimum notice requirement there and then

From my perspective it meant that it was impossible, for example, for me to complain about my manager to his superior should the need arrise and I just began to feel totally uncomfortable working there. There were security cameras in the canteen, they data taken from login times on the network as evidence of lateness against several people who got nasty letters/emails ...

I just found it an unacceptable atmosphere of monitoring and it actually made me far less productive as I just felt that someone was constantly watching over my shoulder, could be reading my emails, listening to my voicemail (a few times all of my messages were marked "previously listened to" when I had never heard them)

So, I left!

Now working in a much more pleasant environment. I really don't understand that kind of paranoia about staff's behaviour. It's totally counter productive and just gives people an impression that they're not trusted.

I feel it's only 1 step away from asking you to empty your briefcase/handbag or on the way out.

Maybe they were building a case for constructive dismissal.

These sort of little rules companies put in place are great for getting rid of people.

Although monitoring isn't nice so what, either someone is paranoid they are being spied on or the MD is paranoid his staff arent working. I had a manager that didn't have the power to look at my internet / e-mail records so he would constantly monitor what people were doing my constantly checking up on them.

Which would you prefer

Solair

No it wasn't a case of constructive dismissal. Their turnoever rate was ridiculous. It was just bad "control-freak" management tactics that rubbed everyone up the wrong way right across the board.

There were regular emails to the entire group regarding lateness e.g. they would e-mail people for logging in at 09:00:26 instead of 09:00:00.

The same guy was harassing a female member of staff who was spending considerable lengths of time (about 10 mins at a time) in the bathroom. It turned out she had serious period problems and eventually threatened to take legal action against him.

Just a totally unreasonable manager and a terrible working environment. I just didn't see the point in putting myself throught that kind of stuff when I could easily get a job elsewhere.

There were also lots of issues like achieving targets and meeting criteria for bonuses and then having to argue to get them paid. They would conveniently forget / make up some convoluted reason for not paying productivity bonuses which had been promised.

It lead to terrible morale problems and people leaving in droves.

Thankfully, it wasn't a job I was particularly depending on for any reason.

I have no problem with some degree of monitoring, but I do think that giving some people powerful monitoring tools can just lead to them abusing them and causing problems.

The manager himself eventually ended up being let go!

Uuuh Patsy

damnyanks wrote:

Maybe they were building a case for constructive dismissal.

These sort of little rules companies put in place are great for getting rid of people.

Although monitoring isn't nice so what, either someone is paranoid they are being spied on or the MD is paranoid his staff arent working. I had a manager that didn't have the power to look at my internet / e-mail records so he would constantly monitor what people were doing my constantly checking up on them.

Which would you prefer

You must be a manager? Only a manager could rationalise and justify this behaviour. I'd say in Nazi Germany you could have found yourself a high profile position quite easily. Its amazing what people can justify to themselves as normal; decent; respectful human behaviour. Glad I don't work with you. From what I'm getting from this discussion, your ability to assume the worst in people would make it an short lived working relationship

damnyanks

Oh don't be silly. If you are willing to consider the employee's view why not the employer. If someone is to assume monitoring is only there for negative reasons (Which in theroy it's not, it is there to ensure you don't break your contract) then why is it so alien for a manager to think the staff are messing about.

And no I'm not a manager, I'm a student but that doesn't mean I can't be objective!

arctictree

In my experiance I have NEVER seen a valued employee being let go for abuse of IT resources.

Abuse of Internet/email was used numerous times as an easy way to get rid of an unproductive employee.

A bit extreme but there you go...

A