As an employee at a small business, can I make a few suggestions before you go with all-out internet tracking? I know I shouldn't use the "fair" or "privacy" argument, so let me put it this way -- monitoring traffic 24/7 may not be cost effective for you. Also, having a more liberal Internet policy than larger companies can be something like an unofficial benefit, and keep you competitive when hiring. Behind the scenes, you can still be in control in several ways without seeming invasive.


"1) If I'm not hovering over their shoulders, there are some employees who spend hours browsing the internet instead of working. I don't pay my employees to surf the internet."

Do they have enough to do? Is there a way to track how much work they are completing without bringing the Internet in to it? You may be surprised. Employee A could be finishing 8 widgets a day and staying off the Internet, and employee B could be finishing 10 widgets and surfing the internet 2 hours. It is highly possible that, like at my workplace, the internet is not the core problem, distribution of workload is. Employee C that finishes 2 widgets and surfs 5 hours, you take aside, warn, discipline, fire. Don't ruin it for employee B. Maybe they could make an extra widget a day, but, in the end, you want to keep productive people like them around.

"2) There are people that view inappropriate materials in areas that other employees can see. I don't want to get sued because someone is looking at porn at work."

There are filters that can block out porn sites, etc. That is perfectly acceptable for computers in common areas and a lot cheaper than having a contract IT guy monitor internet traffic. A speech to your company about acceptable use followed by an appropriately worded error message from one of these filters if someone tries to surf something bad at work (you have been REPORTED!!!!11!!) is enough to make most people THINK they will get in trouble for trying anything funny with a minimum of effort on your part.

"3) I would like a way to monitor communications between customers and my employees. Think of it as quality control."

We have e-mail monitoring on Lotus Notes. All of our messages have a duplicate copy sent to a global account that high-ups can read and IT can access in case something's lost. Supervisors also have access to the email of their employees, managers to that of supervisors, etc. Actually, I think that becouse our email is controlled and monitored so well, the Internet issues have been put off as minor.

Hope I gave you some constructive things to think about. There are ways to monitor the use of your equipment and your employee productivity that make sense from a business perpective and still give your employees a bit of dignity (reducing your turnover, and keeping up morale)

BluePatriot (Employee B )