by Todd Pheifer

Created on: March 05, 2008

Here is a thought. Why don't you spend some quality time supervising your employee and then you won't have to worry as much about their extracurricular Internet usage? Granted, people use the Internet all the time in the workplace for online gambling, viewing porn, and doing extensive online shopping. It robs the company of productivity, ties up server space and bandwidth, and is generally unprofessional. Still, it speaks to a larger problem, which is the fact that people do not want to supervise their employees. Rather, they would like to have sneaky mechanisms in place so that they can pop in and try to catch them doing something bad. Here are a few other thoughts on monitoring Internet usage in the workplace.

WHAT ABOUT PAPER CLIPS?

The Internet is the long-distance telephone call of ten years ago. A decade ago people were worried about employees making those long-distance telephone calls to their mothers on the company dime. They still make those calls today, but they are shopping for shoes online at the same time. Internet usage is definitively up, but companies cannot forget that employees can participate in all sorts of other irresponsible behavior such as phone calls, personal postage, hours of computer solitaire, and stealing office supplies. In other words, companies need to continue to see the big picture, rather than spending a great deal of resources on monitoring one particular thing.

SPEND SOME TIME WALKING AROUND

Again, part of this comes from companies where managers do not want to do their jobs. They want to stay in their offices, rather than working with their employees. If you have a problem or someone alleges a problem with an employee, you have to deal with it. Unfortunately, some managers would rather sit in their offices and spy on their staff. This isn't all companies, but employers also have to keep in mind the atmosphere it creates. On the one hand, it could communicate to employees that the company means business about productivity. On the other hand, it could say to staff members that the company doesn't trust them at all. That is a bad environment to create.

Overall, a company has to do whatever they have to do to control their environment. If Internet usage is running rampant and it is going hand-in-hand with decreased productivity, then perhaps a company might have to put some sort of monitoring in place. However, at some point face-to-face management will need to take place. Tools are nice, but supervision is always required. The computer will monitor employees, but it won't supervise them.

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