Money lost by employees not working during their working hours

Introduction

Businesses have benefited greatly from the advent of the Internet. Increased communication and document transfer being two very important factors. More things are done on the internet and they are done a lot quicker. There is a whole world full of information merely a couple of clicks away. It is not all positive though. The Internet can be used to everyone's advantage in many ways but, conversely, it can be used against both as individuals and as companies.

Recreational web surfing is becoming a growing habit with employees who feel it is their right to spend time surfing the internet, contacting friends and colleagues, reading the news and looking at the weather. The reduced productivity caused by this can be crippling to some smaller companies.

Recreational web surfing

Employees are supposed to work. That is how businesses are productive and how jobs are done. This is the same whether in an office, a field or a cave. Where private telephone calls used to exist, recreational web surfing has taken over. Employees are spending more and more working time surfing the internet for personal pleasure. This means they are no longer doing the work required of them.

In 1996, Compaq had to fire 20 employees when they discovered that each of the employees had visited adult websites over a thousand times each. Similarly, in 2000 the New York Times fired 23 employees for forwarding inappropriate emails.

Lack of productivity is not the only problem that the Internet and misuse of has caused. Joke emails are used to carry viruses. They are quickly and easily spread through home computers and work computers alike. They have also led to discrimination and even harassment lawsuits because of their content.

Monitoring employee's use of the Internet

Many companies have started to invest in monitoring software that will observe their employee's every move both on and off the Internet. By utilising this kind of software, a company can either stop employees from visiting sites or they can use it to track down people who abuse the privilege of the internet and punish them and whilst many employees claim this to be an infringement of their rights. It is the most effective way of stamping out a phenomenon, which was estimated to have cost worldwide businesses in excess of 5.3 billion dollars in 1999.

Most people's work contracts now have a clause written into them about the use of internet and email for personal use, which fully entitles the company to use monitoring software. Every company should be invoking this clause if in fear.

The bottom line

With companies, losing over 5 billion dollars in one year in 1999 and high profile companies like the New York Times and Compaq laying people off, it is obvious that this has become a huge problem. Lawsuits, loss of productivity and inappropriate behaviour, without even mentioning the dangers of Trojans, downloaders, spyware, adware and online scams are all side effects of recreational Internet use and it has to be stopped.

The most effective way of stopping or at least closely monitoring employee's Internet usage is through monitoring software.