Killer surf issues: crafting an organizational model to combat employee internet abuse.

• Author: Young, Kimberly
• Position: MANAGEMENT WISE

Over the years, employees have been provided with uninhibited access to the Internet leading to a drain on time and budgets within organizations. With nearly 64% of employees claiming to use the Internet for personal interest during working hours, according to Snapshotspy.com, developing a policy is in your organization's best interest.

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Employees who surf the Internet during work hours for personal are forcing organizations to regulate its use. According to the computer monitoring software website Snapshotspy.com, more than 50% of employees use the Internet for personal use during an average work day, which decreases productivity, negatively affects customer service, drains network resources, and, in some cases, exposes an organization to legal liability.

Productivity Issues

Internet abuse in the workplace can hurt an organization's reputation for quality and service. As workers surf during work hours, they are slow to respond to customer needs, unable to meet deadlines, and fail to complete tasks. This translates into poor quality and customer service, which eventually hurt the organization's credibility. Over time, an organization that is unable to meet customer needs and deliver quality products will have a negative brand image.

Technology Resource Drain

Employees who use the Internet for purposes other than job tasks place a significant drain on network energy and decrease system responsiveness for job-related functions. This added load costs organizations additional fees to support servers, Internet service providers, and the hardware necessary to accommodate increased network traffic and data storage. An employee's inappropriate use may negatively affect other employees' speed of access or storage space available for work product. Or worse, system slowdowns can delay data retrieval and result in network malfunction or failure due to overload.

Liability Risks

Employees who access inappropriate sites pose serious legal liabilities for the organization. But inappropriate sites include more than those with pornographic material. They also include Internet gambling sites, virtual casinos, gaming sites of any kind, and sites that facilitate illegal downloading of copyrighted books, music, or videos.

An even more alarming risk for organizations is the growing legitimacy of Internet addiction being diagnosed as a disorder, placing organizations under significant liability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As reported in a 2004 Cyber Psychology & Behavior article by Carl J. Case, Ph.D., and the author of this article, "Internet Abuse in the Workplace: New Trends in Risk Management," former workers have sued under the ADA for wrongful termination, claiming they suffer from a mental disorder and holding the company responsible for providing access to the "digital drug." While such claims seem frivolous, even ludicrous, to employers, more cases are being seen in court each year.

Effective Risk Management

An organization should question how best to respond to incidents of abuse. Should it simply suspend the employee's Internet privileges--or take more drastic measures and fire the employee to set an example? If it fires the employee, what will happen to the other employees' morale? How much will customer and investor goodwill be affected if the media report on the firings?

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A Framework for Managing Abuse

Organizations must carefully shape and structure decisions related to employee Internet management to cultivate a positive culture that will maximize productivity and reduce liability. Building upon a risk management theory they first conceptualized and published in a 2001 Journal of Business and Information Technology article, "Employee Internet Misuse: An Epidemic in Need of a Research Framework," Case and the author of this article outlined a comprehensive theoretical framework on employee Internet management explained as a range or continuum of approaches (see Figure 1).

Based upon this model, employee Internet management can be approached from the extremes of a proactive to a reactive perspective. Four management behaviors include practices relating to hiring, prevention, enforcement, and termination or rehabilitation.

Hiring practices incorporate screening prospective employees for Internet misuse tendencies in the form of a...