Policies, monitoring and checking-up on employee's Internet surfing, are increasingly on the agenda for Australian businesses, according to one industry analyst.

Research from industry analyst Gartner (US) found that as much as 40 percent of employee Web use was not business-related.

This finding was supported by a survey released by Employee Internet Management (EIM) software vendor Websense earlier this month, which found that lost productivity and bandwidth are two of the effects of employee Internet usage.

When ZDNet Australia spoke to Gartner's research director, Steve Bittinger, he said that organisations in Australia varied in their approach to monitoring and controlling use of the Internet in the workplace.

-Organisations overly concerned with security are probably [those] that aren't as experienced in security," Bittinger said, adding that those which had invested in creating a higher level of security were more likely to understand the threats and have processes in place to competently and confidently deal with those.

However, Bittinger added that businesses which didn't rely on knowledge-workers, or which required higher levels of security, might not find Internet connection for all employees to be appropriate.

He said it was all about how it fitted in with the business strategies, and whether providing employees with Internet access made a company's workforce more agile, for example through online collaboration. -So the Internet simply becomes one more of those important channels within the larger picture," Bittinger explained.

Bittinger said knowledge workers-â€"typically employees using the Internet to gather work-related information-â€"didn't work a typical nine-to-five day sitting at their desks. -How do you put a limit on knowledge work?," he asked. -The question you've got to ask is: 'are you really trying to tap [into your] knowledge-based workforce?'."

According to Bittinger, staff need to be educated about appropriate Internet usage, coupled with strong policies and good management styles. He suggested that when managing knowledge workers it's better to have policies and agreed outcomes, rather than a long list of what they could and couldn't do.

-It's more effective in the long run to focus on policy and education issues," he said.

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