INTERNET THE FIRE MACHINE

Internet has made our lives easy but on the other hand if you are constantly using Internet at work for your personal use, you might be putting yourself on the verge of getting fired. How? Do you happen to use your internet at work to check your personal email? Do you read daily news at work? Do you visit your social networking website and update it? Well I am sure, most of you replied yes to one or more of these questions. A survey conducted by Vault.com reports that, 25% of the employees use the Internet for personal use during office hours for at least 10 minutes each day. 13% of the employees use it for at least 2 hours every day. Employers are being very vigilant and do not want the employees to waste their valuable time on internet while on job. The employers also do not want their employees to use inappropriate or bad language in email or transfer confidential data, which might hamper the business and cause huge financial losses.   

A survey of 304 US companies by the American Management Association (AMA) and the ePolicy Institute claims that the reasons for the firing were:

64%    email misuse including violation of company policy

62%    use of bad language in emails

50%    use of inappropriate NSFW (not safe for work) content

34%    disproportionate “personal use”

The survey also claims that 66 per cent of the employers monitor the websites their employees visited whereas 65 per cent used various kinds of web nanny software to block undesirable content. 43 per cent employers said they even went through employees personal files. 

EMPLOYERS MONITORING THE EMPLOYEES

BOSS is watching YOU

Companies take a lot of precaution to keep them out of trouble and to ensure that their resources are being used efficiently and effectively. The motive of an organization is to make profit and if they can find any way to cut their costs, they will not take long to implement it. Organizations are using software to monitor the websites visited by their employees, their emails, their files and other stuff. They do not want their employees wasting the organizations time in unproductive activities or transmitting confidential information to outsiders because of which the organization has to suffer huge losses.

IS IT OKAY TO USE INTERNET FOR PERSONAL USE WHILE AT WORK?

Looking at the figures, most of the employees happen to be using internet at work. But, where the line should be drawn after all the company has to pay for that time. Most of the companies have a limited internet use policy. If your company does not have one, 10 minutes is an acceptable time limit. If you happen to be going overboard and your boss calls you in the office; you might try to argue saying you do it only when you are done with work-related activities. Your boss might question you back asking, “Why you do not have enough work to keep yourself busy?” Your boss might want to review your salary because he would now think that, ‘You are paid more than needed’.

For more information about the misuse of internet at work, please visit:
http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/monitoring_computers_internet.html