We’ve all been there. Taking a quick five minutes to watch a viral YouTube video to unwind during a stressful workday. But it’s never just five minutes. As the video draws to a close, your eyes wander off to the right side of the page where it recommends similar videos that you may find just as amusing as the first. Suddenly, you sink deeper and deeper into the clutches of YouTube and its endless stream of funny cat videos. What was supposed to be a brief recess has turned into hours of wasted time.
The problem is, nothing is stopping your employees from doing the same thing during business hours. If they’re not watching online videos, your employees may be visiting sports websites, socializing on Facebook, shopping online, answering personal emails, banking, and more. In fact, the average employee admits to spending 1-3 business hours per day for recreational internet use. And that’s just a conservative estimate. Trawling the web may seem like a harmless pastime, but when it starts to eat away a big chunk of the workday, your business suffers costly repercussions.
Employees using the internet for recreational and personal purposes can drain your company’s bandwidth and cause system slowdowns. More importantly, less time spent on work-related tasks equals decreased productivity and more money down the drain. This is why it’s crucial for employers to set up policies and technologies that minimize the tempting distractions of the internet. For this reason, we have compiled three solutions that organizations can use to deal with internet usage abuse in the workplace.
Establish an internet usage policy
Ensuring that employees don’t abuse their browsing privileges in the office begins with establishing a clear usage policy. Also known as an acceptable use policy, this contract outlines what is appropriate internet surfing behavior in the office. A solid internet usage policy should clarify appropriate online behavior, access privileges, and prohibited websites.
Even though this may be obvious, the agreement must notify employees that visiting illicit websites is strictly prohibited, and that doing so may warrant disciplinary action. Sometimes however, it’s not so clear cut. Twitter and Facebook tend to cause the most distraction in the office, but if social media is an integral part of your marketing team’s campaign, then access to certain sites should be authorized for company business only.
Whatever the case may be, it’s vital that you explain why your company has set up these policies. Employees need to know that unchecked internet browsing behavior may adversely affect server load times and increase the likelihood of malware infections. By reaffirming your policy with your employees, you reduce the risk of internet abuse.
Monitor online activity
After establishing an acceptable use policy, you should alert employees that their web activity will be monitored occasionally. Actively monitoring your employees’ digital footprint with tracking software helps identify which employees are wasting company time. In some cases, just mentioning that your company randomly monitors internet usage in the office is enough to make them think twice about the websites they visit during work.
Most web-hosted endpoint security systems provide remote monitoring services to protect your systems and enforce compliance with your company’s policies. Cybersecurity providers like Cisco, for example, offer web security reporting features that give detailed insight into web usage and malware threats. If you’re on a shoestring budget, standalone tracking software allows you to observe web traffic, emails, social media, keystrokes, and word searches to see whether inappropriate material is being accessed.
Also, keep in mind that there's a fine line you have to tread when monitoring your employees. You don’t want them spending too much time on websites unrelated to their tasks, but too much online surveillance creates a culture of distrust. The perfect balance is to check web usage reports regularly and deal with underperforming staff on a case-by-case basis to avoid alienating your entire personnel.
Use web content filtering technologies
With online shopping, video-streaming services and online gaming sites just a few keystrokes away, your employees are susceptible to tempting distractions as soon as they log on to their work computer. But what if you can completely remove this temptation from the office environment?
Web content filtering technologies like OpenDNS allow you to deny access to online shopping, gambling, and especially porn websites. Additionally, OpenDNS can filter out any sites that may hamper business productivity. With just a click of a button, you can choose to block social media websites, games, Reddit, and other time-wasting applications that employees may potentially visit during business hours.
Lastly, internet-filtering technologies give you a chance to defend your employees and your business from the possibility of malware and spyware infection. Illicit websites and suspicious emails, for instance, tend to carry a plethora of phishing attacks, viruses, and exploits that could cripple your business. Filtering appliances block access to these websites to ensure your employees never encounter these malicious programs in the first place.
The bottom line
As the internet blurs the lines between personal and professional life, employees spend countless hours perusing sites that may not be helpful to your business in any way. In fact, an employee who wastes 2 hours in the internet per day can cost your business 480 hours in a year. Clearly, unchecked internet browsing results in a large chunk of your company’s revenue squandered away. And when you consider how much work your employees can accomplish if they weren’t constantly on Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr or Instagram, web monitoring and filtering policies are a no-brainer.
Internet monitoring and blocking can be a delicate matter, especially if it’s your first time implementing these technologies in your business. That’s why we at Onsite Computing recommend technologies that help you enforce internet usage policies and ensure your employees don’t stray away from the task at hand. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
