Reporting on Your Employees' Internet Access? 130
kooky45 asks: "My team has recently installed content filters for my company which restrict the web sites that employees can visit. It also logs the sites they do visit; not whole URLs, just the site domain names. This has been useful for a couple of disciplinary investigations of employees suspected of wrongdoing. However, word has got round to some managers that this capability exists. They are starting to ask my team to provide lists of sites that their team members have accessed over the past few weeks, claiming they are suspicious of time wasting on the Internet and need proof. We're pushing back because of privacy concerns but the pressure is building on us. We have no experience in this area, and I'd like to ask Slashdot how other companies handle this, what the important considerations are, and where it could all go wrong?"
Re:Our solution (Score:3, Informative)
-Rick
Re:We do this. (Score:4, Informative)
This goes for granting read access to other's email.
Report time/# sites (Score:2, Informative)
Give them an inch (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Company owns the internet access (Score:2, Informative)
They certainly dont do so regularly if they wish to remain employees. What we have here, I think, is a difference in opinion of what amount of slack is acceptable.
My department staff (about 8) range from 8 years to as recent as 6 months ago. Most have been with us for over 4 years. For a department that picked up most of it's staff 4 years ago, I think we're doing well. BTW, the 6 month hire was an add-on. We needed addtional staff -- our company is still growing.
Who said "no downtime"? Clearly, "down time" is mandated by California Law. If you NEED more down time than 15 minutes every 2 hours, (more than 10% of your time spent in "down time"), then I think the problem is clearly with you and I certainly wouldn't consider you for hire -- or if you somehow passed through, I wouldn't keep you past probation.
Re:Find a New Job (Score:3, Informative)
Depends, doesn't it? What if you're a cashier in a quickie-mart? A guy who shovels boxes into trucks at Fedex? An airline pilot, flying the plane?
Extreme examples (intended), but... clearly there are cases where the intar-tube has absolutely zero relevence, to the point of (possibly) being detrimental. Personal time during a break? That's a different story - and is more appropriate to the "coke machine" and "cable TV" examples. Off break & on duty? Not so clear-cut.
(And if you're curious, my solution to all of this is to use a couple retired "beater boxes", completely divorced and on their own cablemodem, located *in the call center itself* to provide access during breaks. This allows users to do whatever they wish - but it is socially policed. Oddly, the users are actually harder about who-uses-what-and-where-they-go-and-when-they-do-