Should Employee Internet Use be Monitored?

Employers are faced with a difficult choice. Allow free access to the Internet to employees, or monitor usage to prevent abuse. One of the big advantages of allowing free access is that the Internet is a great source of information. The benefits of free Internet access are hardly recognized.

The monitoring of employee Internet use has become a common practice of many of the larger employers. Attempts by employers to prevent inappropriate Internet use at work has an unfortunate side effect of discouraging employees from using the Internet at all.

Employers are faced with a difficult choice. Allow free access to the Internet to employees, or monitor usage to prevent abuse. One of the big advantages of allowing free access is that the Internet is a great source of information. This Information could be put to good use in the workplace. The benefits of free Internet access are hardly recognized.

There is no doubt that many employees abuse the free use of the Internet. Many working hours may be wasted by visits to porn sites, on-line gambling, blogging, writing or just pointless hours of surfing.

The Internet has a wealth of information available on almost any topic. Information on industries, trends, best business practices, how others have solved similar problems and so on. Internet monitoring inhibits access to useful information as much as it prevents abuse.

Even where non-work related usage is concerned, there are many instances where using the Internet is more time-efficient than the alternatives. Does it really matter if the employee looks up the TV schedule on the Internet rather than referring to a newspaper or magazine? Or booking movie or theatre tickets, ordering products and services or on-line banking? Doing these on the Internet is very time-efficient and avoids the need for trips out of the office to achieve the same thing.

Then there is Facebook, the site most commonly restricted by employers. Does it really matter if employees are messaging through this at work? Perhaps there could be some work related benefits? It probably uses less time than the inevitable long phone calls to and from friends and family.

Obviously, the expectation of responsible usage must be encouraged. Surfing should not be at the expense of getting work done. But there must be other ways of achieving a responsible attitude.

It is up to management to foster a committed and responsible attitude to work. This can be achieved through better leadership by management, employee incentives and productivity targets. One of the keys lies in giving more responsibility to employees is that they are less likely to abuse the system when they carry the can!

The relationship between employer and employees should be one of trust. Performance evaluation should be based on outputs. If the outputs are good then why worry about Internet usage?

In an age where empowerment has become a major buzz-word employees are being given more power to control the way they work and how they achieve their work related objectives. Empowerment means treating employees as adults. How can this be achieved when they are treated like children?