Today social media is accessible more than ever! You can access it from home, from school, and YES... from the office. You know your employees sneak in the occasional glance at the Facebook feed, the occasional tweet and of course looking at the hottest YouTube video. Should you care? The answer is yes, you most definitely should.
A report from a Harris Poll for CareerBuilder stated, "after querying 2,138 hiring managers and HR professionals and 3,022 full-time workers across a variety of industries and company sizes to determine the reasons for the steadily increasing decline of productivity we found personal use of technology continues to lead the charge." From personal texting to video messaging on skype to interacting on social media sites... workers have more options to play on their mobiles and computers than ever.
That is why the security team at TCD are adamant that every business whether you have 5 employees or 100 must have an employee internet usage policy. A good employee policy will create awareness about the challenges and expectations of your team as well as curtail the most egregious transgressions. But beware - a policy that removes all personal devices or prohibits all access and texting during working hours is likely to be resented or just ignored.
Another important consideration in creating your internet usage policy is Internet filtering. Blocking social media sites is probably too extreme a measure, but every company must protect itself from the potential liability that malware causes through illegal and virus carrying sites. Likewise, filtering the Internet can also control the network bandwidth that can get eaten up in sites like YouTube.
If your company does not have an internet policy or it needs to be updated, contact us now. Every company is different in how they regulate their employees internet usage, but EVERY company should have a policy in place. Let the experts at TCD help.
Click here to download our Internet Usage and social Media Policy...