Internet Usage

When I used to work for some well-known French IT company, they used to keep statistics on individual users. As we used to work 12+ hour shifts, we always had the attitude that if you couldn't make the Top 10 for internet usage working a nightshift, you weren't really trying....

The company changed it's internet policy slowly though. They'd always had a no-porn policy which I agree with fully but they started to deny access to sites like hotmail...

Seriously though. Companies like this need to have a good look at themselves. They ask you to work 12+ hours (throw in travelling time etc & this is 14+ hours in a day dedicated to work) & then they try to also block your access to the outside world.....

I'll never go back to being one of those SOMA ridden drones.....

Well the company does pay the employees to work so it is only reasonable that the time You are paid for is actually spent working. Also You are using the company's resources and assets.

The company I work in currently have an internet policy. When I started 9 years ago the policy was that nobody had access unless business required it.

This has since changed to give all access. The policy is that its mainly for business but reasonable private use is allowed as long as it does not interfere with work. Some years ago the helpdesk added further rules so that chatting was not allowed.

All access is monitored but I doubt that anybody gets into trouble unless their work performance is reduced because of the internet use.

Generally its freedom under responsibilty. If You do Your job well, meet deadlines etc nobody will care if You spend 2 hours daily on the internet. I have not heard of anybody beeing fired or anything like that due to internet use.

The company works on a theory called "risk management" for many of it's contracts around the world.

I wonder what the greater risk is?? That I look at my hotmail account & do my internet banking etc at 3am in the morning or that I am sound asleep on the office couch at 3am because I did not sleep during the day as I was trying to fit into those few hours outside of work some semblance of a normal life....

Sorry to be blunt, but if everyone is so unhappy then they need to take responsibility. It's always so easy to blame 'managers' and talk about 'if only' ... if every single person turned up to your work place tomorrow as if the job was just how they wanted it to be, and acted and interacted that way, then you can pretty sure the change would be 1000 times more effective than any 'management initiative'. If people acted themselves how they want their managers to be then we wouldn't even need managers.

It is not just a time thing. As I said above, if your time is being paid for then it is not unreasonable for you to be expected to be working for the benefit of the person/company who is paying for it.


There are also other risks. Now I guess that all you people are computer literate and would never attempt to download anything that could pose a risk to your companies IT infrastructure, however not everyone has that same degree of smarts therefore employee access to the internet could and has caused hugely expensive problems for many industries.


N

Yes You are absolutely right. Even in the big international IT company I work in there are many users that blindly click on any link they receive in the email, open any kind of exe files they are sent and so on causing all kind of problems for themselves and for other users that are affected by worms and virus.

Considering the fact that management would fire all of us if they just could, I'm pretty sure it wont change a thing actually. They have tried that once already. We are seriously understaffed, no money at all is spent on our office (another company bought "mine" a couple of years ago, and they are slowly moving everything away from us) and they've made a system change that went straight to h3ll. The only good thing with that is that unless they start getting things up and running soon, not only our office will be closed, so will all the others - not a customer is going to stay with us. The funny thing is, our office is the one making most money of all of them...