Issues that Internet Misuse In the Workplace can cause
Employees who surf the Internet during work hours for personal reasons
are making organizations create policies to regulate its use. Just how many employees use the internet during work for personal use? The answer is More than 50%(Snapshotspy.com). The issue of doing personal things online during work hours hurts the company in many ways. This issue can decreases productivity, poorly affect customer service,
drain the network resources, and expose an organization to potential
legal liability.
Productivity Issues
Internet abuse at work can hurt an organizations reputation because it can decrease the quality of their service. When workers focus on their personal internet use they are not as quick to assist customers, meet deadlines set by employers, and complete task assigned to them effectively. These are all qualities of poor customer service. These can negatively impact a companies image.
Technology Resource Drain
Using the Internet at work for non work related purposes can really drain the network. Not only does it decrease a networks energy but it also lowers responsiveness to job related tasks. This increases cost for employers because they have to pay for the repair of servers or purchases new ones, they also have to purchase more hardware to accommodate heavy network traffic and data storage. system slowdowns can delay data retrieval and result in
network malfunction or failure due to overload.
Liability Risks
Accessing inappropriate sites can get companies into serious legal issues. These inappropriate sites include: pornography, gambling, gaming, illegal downloads, etc. A legal battle brings about more issues and more money to be spent to fight these issue.
Solutions
Some solutions Include:
- Effective Risk Management
- Evaluate and Screen During Hiring Practices
- Clearly Outline Internet Usage Policies
- Once Policies are outlined, Enforce Internet Usage Policies
Article source: http://content.arma.org/imm/IMMJanuary-February2010/IMM0110managementwisekillersurfissues.aspx
I agree with all of the potential problems you listed. I'm sure most of us have found ourselves in a situation where you get sidetracked by a social site and suddenly you are scrambling to meet your deadline. What that causes is not only incomplete work, but if you do manage to complete it, the quality is usually sub-par. In relation to a lot of our other blogs, the internet is quickly becoming something some even consider a human right. It will be interesting to watch how these online use policies evolve as people grow to depend on it for more and more things.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the post and with Lauren's comment. All of these are potential problems that a company might have. Lost productivity is not a positive problem. As a future manager I would want to curtail this issues as much as possible. Social loafing is tied with Job Satisfaction. If I could add one more solution it would be to increase job satisfaction. If one could increase job satisfaction or possibly find employees that are a better fit for the company I think the problem would decrease significantly.
ReplyDeleteI sort of agree with yall. I know that every time that I have had a job, there was never an excuse to be bored. There was always something to be done. However, I remember that when I would really be working hard on something for any length of time, a break afterward sometimes helped. My problem was that even though we did get breaks, they were not frequent enough. Sometimes getting on the Internet at work, rather than taking a boring time out with nothing really to do, was beneficial. Also, I think it depends a lot on the setting of the job and the type of work you are doing. So, I can see it going both ways. It may lead to neglect of work tasks or it may help renew motivation. So long as it is within reason and not putting the company in a dangerous position (going to inappropriate sites), I see nothing wrong with it. If the privilege is abused, then action should be taken. Since the employee should be happy to have such a privilege, I personally would say fire them if they were taking advantage of the web access because they must not have been appreciative or trustworthy anyway.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that using the Internet at work can decrease productivity. I have not held a job where there are computers available for all employees' use, but I have seen how being on the Internet, even on your cell phone, can cause problems.
ReplyDeleteThere are definitely issues with having access to a computer at work. There is always the temptation to use it for personal use, and especially when there is no one around to check on you. It also opens the door for people to do things that might not look right for the company.
ReplyDeleteOlivia Clark
Like the others, I agree with the problems and solutions listed. Internet misuse is more prevalent nowadays and companies have to be proactive and unique in their approach to limiting personal use of the Internet. Management has to find a balance between allowing and restricting Internet use, like giving their employees a 15 minute time period when they arrive and at the end of the day. Even so, there would be some difficulty to monitor usage especially in companies, such as startups, that rely on the Internet so much.
ReplyDelete