Internet or Internot: What is Your Policy?

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Resource Management   Talent Management  

How often do you access the internet on company time? Not at all? Really? Perhaps you are to be congratulated for your organization’s trust in you.

Well, there was that time when you looked up a Dilbert strip to send in an email to a colleague, though. And that time when you had to access your vacation bookings quickly to make sure everything was in order. And there was also that time when you watched a video on YouTube that someone forwarded to you. But aside from that, your conscience is clear…right?

If your organization has a strict internet usage policy, it suggests that it has had some strong instances of abuse. It could mean there have been situations of inappropriate content access, exposure of the organization to nefarious sites (including those that pose viral concerns) or even blatant overuse for entertainment, purchase or similar personal activities.

Whatever the reason, the general response by organizations to these kinds of offenses is to swing wildly in the other direction—in other words, while internet use by staffers may be passively acknowledged and allowed for the most part, all it takes is some flagrant and poor decisions by a few individuals to put the company into overcompensation mode and clamp down on internet access in all but its entirety.

Ideally, and before this happens, your …

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