Think you can get away with using e-mail and the Internet
in violation of company policy? Think again.
A new survey found that more than a quarter of employers have fired workers
for misusing e-mail and one third have fired workers for misusing the Internet
on the job. The study, conducted by the American Management Association (AMA)
and The ePolicy Institute, surveyed 304 U.S. companies of all sizes.
The vast majority of bosses who fired workers for Internet misuse, 84 percent,
said the employee was accessing porn or other inappropriate content. While looking
at inappropriate content is an obvious no-no on company time, simply surfing
the Web led to a surprising number of firings. As many as 34 percent of managers
in the study said they let go of workers for excessive personal use of the Internet,
according to the survey.
Among managers who fired workers for e-mail misuse, 64 percent did so because
the employee violated company policy and 62 percent said the workers' e-mail
contained inappropriate or offensive language. More than a quarter of bosses
said they fired workers for excessive personal use of e-mail and 22 percent
said their workers were fired for breaching confidentiality rules in e-mail.
Companies are worried about the inappropriate use of the Internet, and so 66
percent of those in the study said they monitor Internet connections. As many
as 65 percent of them use software to block inappropriate Web sites. Eighteen
percent of the companies block URLs (uniform resource locators) to prevent workers
from visiting external blogs.
Companies use different methods to monitor workers' computers, with 45 percent
of those participating in the survey tracking content, keystrokes and time spent
at the keyboard. An additional 43 percent store and review computer files. Twelve
percent monitor blogs to track content about the company and 10 percent monitor
social-networking sites.
Companies are keen to track employee e-mail and Internet behavior in part due
to legal fears. According to research done by the AMA and ePolicy in 2006, 24
percent of companies in the study had e-mail subpoenaed by courts and another
15 percent have faced lawsuits based on employee e-mails.
The researchers found that even though only two states require companies to
notify their workers that they're monitoring them, most tell employees of their
monitoring activities. Of the companies that monitor workers in the survey,
83 percent said they tell employees that they are monitoring content, keystrokes
and time spent at the keyboard. As many as 84 percent tell employees that they
review computer activity and 71 percent alert workers that they monitor their
e-mails.
