Use Common Sense in Cyberspace
Oct 12, 2007
With the growing popularity in social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace over the last few years, it was only a matter of time before employers became concerned about employee usage of company time for recreational use. Some have decided to block employee access to such sites, while others think this is too draconian a step and argue instead for clearly-defined office policy on computer and internet usage.
Provinces such as Ontario and Manitoba have been amongst the first to block Facebook and other sites from government computers. The federal government has also prevented Facebook from being visited in most federal departments in Ottawa, and Winnipeg City Hall has most recently banished the popular social-networking site from its computer networks.
It seems that the primary concern of employers is that employees will waste valuable company time viewing the sites – thereby decreasing productivity - although security and virtual traffic concerns are also behind the increasing number of bans.
More particular to the labour movement, the last few years have seen a growing number of arbitrations that have dealt with the inappropriate use of emails and the internet, many of these attributable to the circulation of inappropriate content amongst employees. Indeed, internal policy breaches and theft of time are serious offences and discharge in a number of cases have been upheld.
But some argue that outright bans on particular internet sites are an overreaction. Recently, Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) issued a release taking this position, and suggesting instead that employers cut employees some slack and focus instead on setting up formal policies for acceptable use of computers in the workplace.
There must be a happy medium that allows employees some latitude to pursue some recreational usage of the internet on their own personal time (lunch, breaks, etc.) without giving cause for concern to their employer that company time and security is being jeopardized. Part of this is the creation of clear policies about such use. But most of it is common sense. If it seems like something one shouldn’t be doing on company time, it most likely is.
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