A company's top salesperson quits because a security administrator called about the many hours he spent browsing the Web the day before looking at luxury carsâ€"just after he brought in a million-dollar order.
More than two-dozen employees have been fired for accessing inappropriate sites. Several have filed suit, claiming they were unfairly singled out, and subpoenaed the company's Web logs. The public relations impact has been disastrous, and recruitment has been down since the story broke.
Web usage is down throughout the company. The IS department is happy, because the network bandwidth is under control, but even business use of the Web has declined. Employees are no longer browsing the Web during their lunch breaks. Instead, they have gone back to their old habitsâ€"taking 90-minute lunch "hours" and hanging out in the halls. Productivity is down, and animosity between managers and employees is up.
In each of these cases, the fundamental problem is the same: The enterprise has not respected its employees' strong desire for privacy, or it has not taken the necessary steps to protect that privacy. Most people accept that their employers have the right to monitor their private Web surfing to prevent abuse, but they nonetheless expect them to respect their privacy by not invoking that right unless there is solid reason to suspect abuse.
Moreover, the Internet is a powerful productivity tool that is useful for personal and professional purposes. As the demands of many professions blur the lines between work and private life, the Internet plays a part in managing both efficiently. As a result, more and more enterprises permit occasional personal usage.
