Web usage monitoring was the preferred method for curtailing employees non-work use of Internet resources, according to last week's IT Manager Channel poll. Respondents also cited e-mail usage monitoring and bandwidth filtering among the methods they would opt for.
"I don't believe employees should be controlled, and some latitude should be allowed to keep employees happy," said one respondent. "But that does not mean blatant overuse or inappropriate use of the Internet should be permitted within the work environment."
Monitoring e-mail and Web usage in the workplace is also an issue which civil liberties groups are concerned about. Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, believes that e-mail should be treated in exactly the same way as post.
"I don't think companies should be entitled to view e-mail that's marked private to an employee, without their permission or consent," Murphy argued, likening it to a letter received at the office marked as confidential.
Murphy said monitoring was an issue about the way in which a company handled its employer-employee relations.
In recent months there has been increasing concern about the lengths Australian enterprises are able to go to when monitoring employees. Issues such as the legal ramifications have been under the spotlight as businesses grapple with how to achieve a balance within their businesses.
Surveys have found that lost productivity and bandwidth issues were two of the effects of employee use of the Internet.
It's a sentiment echoed by David Jones, technical director at software vendor SurfControl. Jones said that the need to take a proactive approach to the issue of employee use of the Internet was what was driving enterprises to move forward with forward with Web filtering.
"The IT department is concerned about bandwidth [and they're] aware that people are downloading MP3s," Jones said.
He said that while people can often have an awareness of what they should be doing, it was better for businesses to have a policy in place regarding acceptable Web and e-mail usage.
A survey conducted by the vendor in the US found that there could be bottom-line implications of junk e-mail, for example using up network resources and interfering with productivity. A 5MB joke screen saver could take up the same amount of space on a company's server as 160 plain text e-mails, SurfControl said in a statement relating to the survey.
