When looking at employee personal Internet use on the job, it's important to consider how you are going to use any monitoring data and, as a part of that, to also think about who will have access data and why.
Consider: If the data you collect is largely or entirely numerical, who aside from the employee is actually going to know what those data mean? Does your current system allow inaccurate assumptions to be made about an employee's behavior and then passed along to others? That is, at best, unfortunate and more likely, unfair.
If you hear reports from a coworker that someone is spending too much personal time on the Internet, do you have information to know whether or not that is accurate? If so, is the employee in question still getting their work done at an appropriate level of quality and in a timely manner? Who in your company would know that? Probably not anyone in your IT department or a manager more than a level or two above the employee. So, should they really be the ones getting and interpreting the data? (And while we're at it, can anyone there objectively define how much 'too much time on the internet' actually is?)
So what does this have to do with the development of policies and procedures? Mostly, it's that sometimes simple is better. Suppose your policy was to simply provide whatever Internet use data you have to employees, individually and in writing, and let their conscience do the rest? Nothing says that you can't also talk with them about the appearance to you or others that their internet use may be interfering with their work and that, if it proves to be true, it might be the grounds for counseling or disciplinary action.
It also doesn't prevent you from creating 'hard access limits' to certain types of sites, etc. In this system, who will collect, review, discreetly provide, and protect the data? Who cares! All you really need is a reliable system for identifying "red flags" and obvious abuses along with a system for notifying supervisors if either are found.
Will some employees still abuse the system? Sure. But that's why we have supervisory training to be sure that problem employees can be identified as quickly as possible and dealt with in an appropriate, effective, legal, and ethical manner.
Christopher Bauer helps companies create and implement high-impact, high-ROI ethics and values training programs. In addition to consultation on program development and implementation, he also provides keynotes and seminars on how to reduce costly employee ethics problems. Information on Bauer Ethics Seminars is available at
