by Ted Sherman

Created on: June 08, 2008

If an employee is taking time every day from work to play with the internet, that is certainly grounds for disciplinary action. As an ex-boss, I doubt if I'd fire the person for the first infraction, unless it was so outrageously obscene, threatening or criminal. For a minor first offense, I'd call for a face-to-face talk, sit down and remind the employee that while at work, he/she is being paid to work every minute of every hour as officially required. Many young people coming from high school and college have a very relaxed attitude about work discipline and responsibility for expenses, so a first offense like this may come as a surprise and a "who, me?"

At the end of the disciplinary session, I'd offer some very positive advice that the employee should work extra hard from now on to prove he/she is worthy to keep on the job. At the same time, I'd make it perfectly clear that a second such offense would be grounds for dismissal. Then, I'd hope the advice would sink in.

It is important that the boss clearly inform all new employees from day one of the company rules about personal use of their computers, and the consequences of disobeying them. While ratting on fellow workers is traditionally a no-no, the new employees must be encouraged to look for people who are doing personal material on their computers during work hours. If they do not want to report the infractions, they should be encouraged to at least tell the other employee to get back to work. New employees, as well as all others, should be reminded frequently that failure to do honest work is costing the company unnecessary expenses, and everyone in the company loses when it happens.

As for allowing employees, when on lunch hour, after hours or other non-work times, to use their computers for personal items, I strongly believe it is a very bad idea. First of all, the computers require expenses of electricity, updating, cleaning, repairs, internal storage and other company-paid services. Using them for personal items such as Email, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Ebay or any other online services creates expenses the company should not have to pay.

If your company, like mine, has 80,000 office employees, each with a desk computer, and just a small percentage of them use their company computers just an hour a day for personal time and projects, it wouldn't take a brilliant mathematician to figure out the thousands of company dollars being wasted every day.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.