Internet Surfing at Work--Is it OK?

[MetaLord 9]

Interesting Article: http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com/2009/03/24/employee-internet-surfing-do-you-care/

Employee Internet Surfing: Do You Care?

March 24, 2009

A co-worker recently pointed me to a very interesting blog post by Phil Johnson, president of PJA Advertising, who writes on Ad Age’s “Small Agency Diary” that his office recently renovated and changed from a closed-office environment to a a completely open floor plan with no private offices, with the goal of creating a truly collaborative work space.
With this, of course, came a bit of a new dilemma: With no doors and no high cubicle walls, everyone could suddenly see what everyone else was doing on the computer. Shoe shopping, twittering, gawking at Facebook photos — the works. So Phil came up with a very clear policy on employees’ Internet usage at work, and shared it with his employees.

The statement? I don’t care what you do on the Internet.
It may seem bold, but he explains his reasoning in this post (http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=135266). And I have to say, he has some great points.
In contrast, Helen A.S. Popkin stresses in a recent MSNBC post (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29796962/) that “the Internet is not your BFF,” relating the recent story of a would-be Cisco employee who tweeted post-interview:
Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.
A Cisco employee caught wind of her tweet and responded on twitter with:
Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.


Pretty sure that ruined her chances at scoring the job.
There are two sides to Internet usage at work, and there are people on both sides of the camp. However, as Phil gets at in his blog post, employers are supposed to be encouraging employees to think in terms of technological innovation and work to mesh their offline and online lives for greater creativity — and productivity. Yet, many of these same employers hypocritically limit their employees’ Internet usage, instead of encouraging it and seeing its positive aspects.
The way I see it, it comes down to mutual respect. Give your employees the opportunity to blend their personal and work lives, and realize that although they may be shopping for that last-minute birthday gift at work, they are also likely responding to work e-mail at home and taking care of business matters on their off-hours. Accept and embrace the merging of these worlds — because with or without you, it is an inevitability.
What are your thoughts? Are you in the camp that promotes your employees’ inevitable Internet usage, and gets the benefits that come with that usage? Or are you in the camp that thinks personal Internet usage is strictly for off-business hours, and personal and business lives must be kept separate?
Agree or disagree, I’d love to hear your views.

What's the story in your office? (assuming that if you can read this that you've got at least SOME flexibility)

[Zach929rr]

I work at home :dunno: I could assault the bone-a-phone and eat popcorn all day long for all work knows.

[mtnairlover]

My POV? Um ok...so I'm taking a brief moment here at work...I will do this every now and then when I need to alleviate the brain, because I'm proofing content for online courses. That can sometimes get a tad overwhelming, so I create that brain break by surfing a place that I know and chat with a few people I know to give myself some kind of brain loosening (for lack of a better way to put it). In turn, I can get back to the intensity of the content proofing and offer up better advice to my subject matter experts when I send their work back to them.

My work is a tad more involved than that, but that give a little bit of an idea.

And yes, I'm one of those really diligent people who will check my work e-mail at home in the evening and on weekends to see if there is anything that needs immediate attention. I'll also do work on off hours from home to get ahead and try to create/formulate plans for future work...that's just how I work...meh.

I don't know about everyone, though...but that's just an opinion from one worker who tends to surf occasionally.

[Devaclis]

DO NOT REPRESS MEEEEEE!!!

[McVaaahhh]

As the manager for salaried developers my philosophy on the internet and work in general is pretty simple.

It's not a problem unless you make it a problem. I will not monitor internet usage, unless you force me to. You have a job to do and if you can screw around on the internet half the day and still get your job done, so be it. But if you're consistently late getting things done and you're screwing off all day, then we have a problem.

[rforsythe]

Our office policy is pretty simple - don't offend your coworkers, use headphones for audio that's bad, and get your shit done. Now, other groups in the company are under strict monitoring, but it kind of depends on where you are. Beyond that just use common sense; if you want to surf forums or order crap online, meh whatever (we are an online retail site, they kind of expect it). Just don't look at porn or things to that effect.

[McVaaahhh]

Yeah, I forgot that part.

If you've got something up on your screen that could be offensive to your coworkers (a picture of Ralph for example) then that's a problem.

[rforsythe]

Yeah, I forgot that part.

If you've got something up on your screen that could be offensive to your coworkers (a picture of Ralph for example) then that's a problem.

Exactly. People have been killed for that.

[Devaclis]

I am in a locked office. I cannot be seen, nor can my computer. We are WebSensed from our DC in Atlanta as far as surf control goes but there is no active monitoring.

They CAN pull usage reports and stuff like that, and they occasionally do, but that is for bandwidth usage reports. I usually have the highest bandwidth usage.

[Tipys]

i surf using my phone while at work

[puckstr]

I am in a locked office. I cannot be seen, nor can my computer. We are WebSensed from our DC in Atlanta as far as surf control goes but there is no active monitoring.

They CAN pull usage reports and stuff like that, and they occasionally do, but that is for bandwidth usage reports. I usually have the highest bandwidth usage.


Dana you are actively doing "Performance" testing of bandwidth to ensure the quality of the service.

[Panman06]

Our company policy allows for moderate internet surfing. I would say, more liberal than a lot of other companies. However, some of our users don't understand that IT is always watching. We have monthly internet usage reports that rank the top 50 heaviest internet users. If we see they were visiting Youtube 90% of the time, then that report goes to their supervisor and we have a "talk."

Users always come up with the dumbest excuses when they're busted for downloading Gigs of data. A lot of them don't realize that we can see which sites they frequent. :lol:

[rforsythe]

I am in a locked office. I cannot be seen, nor can my computer. We are WebSensed from our DC in Atlanta as far as surf control goes but there is no active monitoring.

They CAN pull usage reports and stuff like that, and they occasionally do, but that is for bandwidth usage reports. I usually have the highest bandwidth usage.

At my last job they started looking to see what you did, but at a statistical level. Basically the way to not get noticed was to make sure you just stayed off the "top 10" list of proxy users.

I found that bouncing my web connections through a proxy I accessed via SSH tunnel to an outside server was a fun way to get around that. ;)

[puckstr]

At my last job they started looking to see what you did, but at a statistical level. Basically the way to not get noticed was to make sure you just stayed off the "top 10" list of proxy users.

I found that bouncing my web connections through a proxy I accessed via SSH tunnel to an outside server was a fun way to get around that. ;)


I had an employee that was circumventing the filters by using outside proxy servers. He was warned and I got the ammo I needed to upgrade my firewall and Content Filter. His Internet access was cut off, (other than Email).

Be careful defeating company computer use policies. Some companies see those violations as grounds for termination.

[d3spair]

I surf as stress relief, and my boss knows it and doesn't care.

[asp_125]

Help help.... I'm being repressed! We have net filters so most pics I see are red X's including all the kitteh pics.

[TFOGGuys]

ssssshhhh....my boss will freakin kill me if I get caught on here......

[Tipys]

^^^You must work for a real ass

[UglykidJoe]

we are locked down to a point, I can view images but I cant see videos. anything offensive is blocked, but for the most part everything I surf is available to me. Working for a Faith based HealthCare organization it is understandable, the one thing I hate that they block is radio stations.

[asp_125]

streaming eats up bandwidth so radio stations and video links are blocked here. I used to work at a fiber company and they encouraged a certain amount of high bandwidth usage to measure network performance.

[rforsythe]

I had an employee that was circumventing the filters by using outside proxy servers. He was warned and I got the ammo I needed to upgrade my firewall and Content Filter. His Internet access was cut off, (other than Email).

Be careful defeating company computer use policies. Some companies see those violations as grounds for termination.

Yes they do, and it can get you in trouble. I was one of the security engineers there and my outside proxy also had legitimate uses so it was all good.

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

Be warned, especially in todays economic climate that if they're going to cut heads ANYTHING and EVERYTHING CAN and WILL be used against you. I always got my job done, unlike my co-worker, and there was never any reason to even warn me, but they just started looking at "numbers". Regardless of the fact that their policy specifically allows "incidental use" and specifically mentions surfing on breaks and during lunch, they used that against me. I surfed before work, during lunch, after work, and during the breaks instead of going for a smoke, and it didn't matter to them, it was still too much. Like I said, there was no warning, just BAM! Also, gun sites are strictly banned, and they mentioned I had gone to one. Well, even though it blocked me, and I didn't intentionally go there anyways as it was a link, they didn't even take that into consideration.

So, in the future, I will NEVER surf or use e-mail for anything but purely business, as I'm never going to give anyone that excuse ever again. I'll be more like a union guy: I show up exactly on time, take my break exactly the same time and be completely unavailable, I'll take lunch exactly on time, and I'm leaving after my 8. They want a robot, that's what they'll get. Hopefully my next employer won't be like that, but....

So, as I said, be warned, the IT and HR Nazis' are everywhere....

[dm_gsxr]

youtube is blocked (I don't care and I have flash-block to stop other video sites from popping up). That's for bandwidth issues though.

My manager has come to the group and said that he doesn't care what is done, we can leave early or come in late, we can surf the 'net. As long as work gets done and someone is here during work hours (unix admins; have to be able to be available for problems), he's pretty easy.

Someone was doing a lot of youtube watching which is what caused the initial (and recent) block.

The company does do regular web searches for the company name. Last year some idiot was blogging that he was at work (here), blogging (instead of working), and the company was a joke. He was terminated :) In part because he came to the HR meeting with the attitude that he had a right to 'blog and the company couldn't stop him.

And I blogged some positive info about the company, subsequently was called on the carpet and received a verbal reprimand. The company is very sensitive to _any_ blogging using the company name. (The problem wasn't the positive info, that was just how they found my blog. I had an issue 6 months earlier that I'd posted; all general, no company or name info but tying the two together identified the company.)

Carl

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

I repeat: In this economic climate, do NOT think you're safe because everyone else surfs and it's allowed. That's what I thought. Do NOT give them even the slightest reason to can you.

[AetasMutuo]

I work from home also on a VPN PC. Usually I am too busy to spend much time surfing or messing around. When I do check other email or surf, I use my home computer since it is on the same desk as my work computer.

As far as I have seen, my job only cared how much time you were spending cyber loafing if you were not getting your stuff done. Obviously no streaming audio or video and no porn was ever allowed.

I spend a lot of time working in the off hours and the weekend as well, especially when I am on call. But I always find it best never to test my luck on such things, especially when the economy is not so good.

Jay

:)

[TurboGizzmo]

I can lock it all down but I was told to relax some of the settings for "down time" employees may have. The biggest thing is watching bandwidth hogs. If needed I can hop on our customer network (different network we have for customers and consultants) or use my phone.

Oh and i am very careful when tweeting, facebooking, blogging.....the world is watching....