Employees and Cyberslacking - Website Acceptable Use Policy

A recent survey commissioned by Websense indicated that the average time spent by an employee web surfing on non-business related websites was 56 minutes a day – that is 4 hours and 40 minutes a week.

Now that web browsing is the main means for delivering viruses and spam not only is productivity clearly an issue but security is also a major consequence of providing such free web access.

The survey further found that 81% of companies did not block the use of peer to peer applications (file sharing) and 76% did not control the use of instant messaging (including the use of attachments).

 It is also important to fully appreciate that social networking is growing at a huge rate and a recent report published by Nielsen examines time spent on multiple social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The study compares total minutes in April 2009 compared to April 2008. The results are not as much surprising as they are revealing.Apart from the obvious such as the time that is being spent and the blocking of porn or the use of gambling sites in the workplace there are other reasons to control employees use of the internet such as defamation of third parties, racism as well as the more commercial aspect of matters such as employees unintentionally entering into legal obligations with third parties.

According to Nielsen, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. Twitter experienced extraordinary growth in the last year with total time spent up by over 3,700%.

Time spent on Facebook, the popular network has increased nearly 700% year-on-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion minutes in April 2009. 

 We would strongly recommend that all organisations have in place an Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”).

 An AUP is a set of rules that put a structure around what use an employers internet and computer system can be put to by its employees. In order to make any AUP effective we would also recommend that it be combined with a software program that provides employees with a weekly report showing internet use – in this way problems can be highlighted before they become real problems and employees become aware of their actual time spent on the internet whilst in work hours.

 We can provide you with an AUP as well as provide you with advice surrounding the best way to implement it.

Please contact David on dreilly@dreilly.ie for further information on this topic or any other legal problem or matter.