Time to Get Anti-social?

I have been trying my best to be antisocial all of my working life.

But unfortunately my boss expects me to show up for work every day and deal with other people the whole time I am there as well.

The last time I worked in the US the company did not allow connections to the internet even. All email addressed to your company account came through the IT department.

If you wanted to connect to Yahoo or anyone else you went to separate PCs in the Library. I thought it was a perfectly good policy.

This was 12 years or so ago, I was managing an engineering department, engineers had access to email and the web (for the most part usually research) but the info on the web was not development like it is now, and hunting for the information can be time consuming.

One designer I had was abusing it, goofing off on a snowmobiling site. I talked to him about it (warning) He also loved downloading screen savers, and after hosing his computer up with one. I initialed anything put on the computer has to get approved, and this was a casual , can I install this software?...well the same designer did both again hosed up the computer with a screen saver and was on this snowmobiling site. I pulled the rights to engineering from surfing the web and only gave them email (including myself). and a central computer to access the web. Until I can decide how to handle this. These are professional engineers....for the most part. The whole situation was a pain in the a$$.

I soon realized that the nephews of the owners of the company (what I would call IT) had people installed monitoring software, which I found out, fine, I looked and the designer in question and just s#it.

I looked into his projects on the initial it looked good, but as one dug into it, the performance issues were questionable at best. He quit before I could leave him go.

I do not believe that it should be pulled, one needs this type of collaboration. But do not turn your back on it or ignore the possible abuse.

p911

It's overblown.

Keep anti virus software up to date. There will always be a few people that abuse the privilege of having computer access, but they are the same ones that would have found ways to screw off, even before the internet.

Outright banning of these sites is going to create an atmosphere of mistrust between management and employees. As long as a persons productivity is on par with what's expected, I see no harm.

With that said, I also think that companies should have clearly written policies in place regarding any monitoring that they are doing, ( if they are monitoring computer use, email traffic, etc., everyone should know about it up front).

Also, who owns email transmissions sent and received on company computers. Several court cases have popped up in this regard, and companies would probably be wise to get a lawyers help when drafting thes policies.

Soon this will all probably be moot, due to the fact that Blackberrys, Ipods, etc are no longer just phones, but web enabled also.

banning is bad as well as anti-productive. It is the screw-offs that you have to identify, before they make it difficult for others. Remember its not all black and white. as a manager you have to keep your people productive as well as answering, or pacifying the stakeholders of the company.

As one that has been both a departmental manager and project manager, there is a balancing act between providing fringe benefits to your good performers and limiting abuse by your poor performers.

I don't have the stats in front of me, but I do recall there being a pretty significant study stating that the more freedom you provide your employees, the more they will be in the office working. Like letting them take the occasional long lunch to take care of a few errands, allowing them to make personal phone calls, leave early or come in late to take care of some family related requirements. If you do not allow these freedoms to take care of life's little issues, then they are going to just call in sick every now and then and end up taking the whole day off.

Additionally, while at work, the freedom to read sports articles, or entertainment sites during their lunch break, or CR4 for that matter (like I am doing now) provides the necessary distraction that brains needs to reset. The human brain can not focus on one issue, consistently for a sustained period without some type of break. Acknowledging that, letting your employees know that they can take breaks without being criticized provides for a relaxed environment. And providing them the ability to do what they enjoy during that break makes for a happy employee in a relaxed environment.

Where this becomes an issues is to what extent you allow access and provide flex-time and computer use so that others don't take advantage. And also of concern is that nature of your business, you may be an organization that would not want to open their network to even the slightest intrusion or virus.

For an average company, that is neither a government contractor nor working on anything that could remotely compromise national security… the best way to handle it, in my opinion, is as follows:

First, your IT network should have the appropriate common security features: Firewall, Virus Protection, Spam Filters, Website Blocker, User rights limited at the PC level, etc.

Second, a computer use policy that all employees sign, stating things such as computers and all data contained therein is company property, company reserves the right to monitor all computer activity, any software installed has to be approved, a statement about non-work related computer use during normal working hours, and guidance for common sense web surfing practices.

For website blocking specifically, on subject with the OP, the debate is not overblown… only people's reactions to the debate are. The next greatest thing on the internet will always provide distracting temptations to your employees. When e-trading took off, everyone was managing their portfolio, now the hot topic is social networking sites. So it is important to identify and discuss these issues.

Part of being a good employer/boss is to provide ample flexibility and freedom to your employees while at the same time shielding them from unnecessary distraction, and protecting the company's infrastructure from unnecessary risk.

For example, blocking all pornography sites is a no brainer but Facebook is a new player at the table. We know now that blocking MySpace is a good call because you can embed code into the page that runs and can infect your machine simply by loading the page. Facebook prevents embedding code but can provide an overly distracting device to those less focused and dedicated.

In summary, the best path I have found, was to implement controls that protect your data and infrastructure and prohibit access to any site that could compromise those protections plus any site that contains objectionable material (e.g. porn).

Then you have policies in place to reprimand/discipline the abusers. Don't uninstall solitar from every PC, but if you find a user abusing this and playing solitar 70% of his workday, pull them into your office, let them know you have been monitoring their computer usage, and this activity needs to stop or they can find another job.

In today's job market, you will be able to find a replacement for them pretty quickly and this will also send a message to the balance of the employees, that yes…. we let you read your sports stories, manage your fantasy football league, make personal calls, take a long lunch, even play StarCraft if you want… during your breaks but we still expect 8 hours of performance a day in exchange.

Freedom plus understating of expectations plus discipline of abusers is a perfect mix. I say allow Facebook, warn any abusers, and let go repeat offenders.

JavaHead

I don't have the stats in front of me, but I do recall there being a pretty significant study stating that the more freedom you provide your employees, the more they will be in the office working. Like letting them take the occasional long lunch to take care of a few errands, allowing them to make personal phone calls, leave early or come in late to take care of some family related requirements. If you do not allow these freedoms to take care of life's little issues, then they are going to just call in sick every now and then and end up taking the whole day off.

I have seen this also....the few that abuses it when management hears of its one its too late to handle it as a isolated infraction. Especailly a family business that employess useless nephews of the family owners.