non-work related emails

Lola815 · April 2003

does anyone have an email policy that says absolutely no non-work related emails allowed? if so, does this work? do you monitor your employees computers? right now our policy is that non-work related emails are allowed if off the clock, but we are having a few problems with this issue. any ideas would be helpful.

thanks you in advance.

hrjm · April 2003

We have a email and Internet usage policy that states our computers are for business purposes only and personal email is not allowed. However, we are also a public entity and all computer usage is a public record in Florida. I suggest putting a email/Internet policy in place, educate the employees and make it a part of your new employee orientation training. We also require a signed acknowledge receipt for each policy.

jimlegal · April 2003

Agree with HRJM. I would put an internet use policy in place.

valentine · April 2003

I would also put a useage policy in place. I have a copy I can send you if your're interested. Just send me your e-mail address.

Valentine

HRH · April 2003

>I would also put a useage policy in place. I have a copy I can send
>you if your're interested. Just send me your e-mail address.
>
>Valentine

HRH · April 2003

> >I would also put a useage policy in place. I have a copy I can send
>>you if your're interested. Just send me your e-mail address.
>>
>>Valentine

I would love a copy of your policy, if it's not too much trouble!

valentine · April 2003

> > >I would also put a useage policy in place. I have a copy I can send
>>>you if your're interested. Just send me your e-mail address.
>>>
>>>Valentine
>
>
>I would love a copy of your policy, if it's not too much trouble!

No trouble at all. Please give me your e-mail address.

Valentine

HRH · April 2003

> > >I would also put a useage policy in place. I have a copy I can send
>>>you if your're interested. Just send me your e-mail address.
>>>
>>>Valentine
>
>
>I would love a copy of your policy, if it's not too much trouble!

So sorry- my first time at this - forgot to give you my e-mail/fax

[email]cnelson@rieke.com[/email] FAX 847-622-9750

HRPeg · April 2003

There is a policy available on this site as well. We also have a policy in place. We especially do not allow emails from outside the company due to potential viruses. We had someone open one last year and we were down for 2 days! In our industry, this was big bucks!

njjel · April 2003

May I ask the respondents if your policies are indeed preventing your employees from receiving/sending private emails? What about access to the internet for personal use? If you have a policy againist that, how is it working out? We currently do not have a policy in place and upper management is reluctant to do so for morale purposes. Has having these policies in place affected morale at all in a negative manner?

crawfod · April 2003

Back in 1996, before my time, my employer developed a policy on these matters, including faxes, telephones, copy machines, etc., basically saying using these devices for personal purposes was prohibited. There was also the obligatory language dealing with offensive communications and the rights of the employer to monitor any and all devices, with termination being a possibility. Yes, there was some uproar, and I'm sure someone asked, "You mean my child cannot call me at work to say they're safely home from school?" Someone probably had to say, "Technically, that's correct, so use a cell phone". Then you get into other issues about the use of company time to conduct personal business.

From my perspective, it will take a serious breach of etiquette that to any layperson (Read Jury) would also be an obvious abuse of the above before I would support termination. However, I would support a supervisor taking disciplinary action if an employee took a 20 minute break and then came back and talked to their mother for another 15, especially if they had been warned about doing that. And yes there is still the question of consistent enforcement of the policy that presents a barrier.

Bottom line is our work culture pretty much accepts the use of all the above for personal purposes to some degree. These policies, to me, are designed to give employers a tool should there be abuse. Your battles need to be carefully chosen.

Dasher · April 2003

Honestly, I do not think it is reasonable to expect that employees with access to the Internet will not receive or send emails. Our policy restricts the time one can use the system for a personal matter; the kind of sites/emails one can visit and/or accept, and generally talks about the company's expectations. We have anyone with Internet sign an agreement as to their understanding of our parameters and we state that the company will periodically monitor usage That being said, we have the departmental directors or supervisors be aware of excessive or inappropriate usage, and that is more than likely the key. We are a small company, however, and it may be easier for us to monitor. Yes, our computers are for company use, however, our employees spend a lot of time here and may need to use them as well.

Lola815 · April 2003

My problem isn't with a policy...we have a policy, it's with the monitoring side. Right now we have a manager who is abusing the policy (sending inappropriate emails to co-workders and who knows who else) and when the IT guy went to look at his computer, all his files had been erased. We were able to get the proof elsewhere, so he has been written up and hopefully this will all end, BUT how do you guys monitor at your companies??? I have notice that some employees it is easy to see what they are doing and others it is not.

Mentel · April 2003

We also have a policy and last summer I actually fired an employee for personal internet usage. The reason we even looked at her computer was that her productivity went way down when she got Internet access and she would change the screen when someone went by her cubicle. She went out on a WC leave and we looked at her usage. It turned out she was shopping most of the time! She is a CADD Tech and had been billing clients for time she spent shopping online. She came back from her leave and we told her we had changed her password. This should have tipped her off that we had been on her computer. She immediately went back to her Internet cruising. Now her husband was laid off and she was instant messaging him for hours at a time. I put all documentation together and we fired her. She did not get UC! We had considered charging her with fraud since we had to go back over the past three months of client billings to make sure we didn't charge them for something that didn't get done. You need the policy to take care of these blatent abuses. We don't sweat the everyday stuff like emails from a mom or sister. Just like we don't sweat the occasional personal call. Our employees have lives outside of here and we recognize that. We would only check a computer for abuse if productivity is affected.

Leslie · April 2003

We also have a policy in place, but really don't worry much unless, as you say, productivity is down or a complaint is lodged. I had a department manager tell me on a Monday that she was firing her weekend supervisor because when she got on the office computer that Morning the history list was full of porn sites. We had IS look into it, and it appears the supervisor didn't do much supervising that weekend. We termed. She's filed for unemployment, but we haven't seen a determination yet.

Pork · April 2003

DO NOT ESTABLISH A POLICY IN WHICH YOU DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO CONTROL. THE VALUE IS ONLY PAPER DEEP! YOU'LL BE TOUCHING ON PRIVACY ISSUES AND HOSTILE WORK PLACE ISSUES. USE YOUR CHAIN OF COMMAND, CHAIN OF AUTHORITY, AND THEIR ABILITY TO PRIVATELY AND POSITIVELY ENFORCE THE ABUSE OF THE NETWORK. HAVE IT KNOWN THAT THOSE WHO ABUSE THE E-MAIL SYSTEM COULD HAVE THE CAPIBILITY TAKEN AWAY OR CONTROLLED BY THE DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS. PORK

valentine · April 2003

Pork

I agree with you about privacy and hostile work place issues; however, unless there is a specific policy it will be hard to fire someone for abuse, especially if they go to UE.

Also, unless it is in writing, you will have issues of privacy because they can say they didn't know. It will be their word against the DH. Also one DH might consider something an infraction and another might not.

We have a computer use policy as advised by our legal counsel. It is pretty clear and we do expect DH to enforce it. We also have our IT person check the computers when he comes in quarterly to do maintenance. We were told by our legal that this is okay as long as the ee are notified that this is going to be done and when you issue the policy you have them sign that they received a copy and they understand that the computers are company property and to be used only as such and not their personal computers. It has worked for us. We haven't had any issues since the policy. Before that, we had a lot of them.

Just my thoughts.

Valentine

Lola815 · April 2003

so, do you tell your employees the specific date when their computers are being checked? or do they just know that the IT guy will check them once a quarter? we also have a policy that says computers may be monitored and we had our policy checked over by our lawyer, it's a good policy, I'm just concerned that there are people who abuse the policy and cover their tracks so we will never know.

njjel · April 2003

It's my understanding that ANYTHING done on the computer, even after it is deleted can be detected. Is this the case?

Brad Forrister · April 2003

njjel, it's not that uniform. (But then, what is?)

- If you erase a file on a Windows or Mac system, the computer initially puts it into the trash folder. It's completely retrievable until you empty the trash.

- If you delete an email, most email client programs just move the document to the email system's trash folder.

- Once you empty the trash, the computer just says the spot(s) on the disk where the file formerly resided are available for re-use. Until someone re-uses it, the file can be retrieved, although it requires special software to do it. But once you write a new file to disk, the old file is probably gone.

- If you visited an Internet site or used Internet email, some portions of what you accessed may be available in your Internet cache, although that space is reused constantly, so it won't necessarily be there indefinitely.

- But keep in mind that if your computer is backed up, or if the file's on a network that's backed up (which is almost always the case with email), the file or email message will be on the backup if it was on the system when the backup was taken.

You usually hear about "deleted" files being retrieved in one of two scenarios - either in litigation or in a criminal investigation. In litigation, it's usually pulled from backups. In criminal investigations - kiddie porn, for instance - the cops frequently use software to retrieve any fragments of deleted files that remain on a hard drive.

The one time our company had a problem that was of disciplinary significance, the guy never deleted any of the emails. Our IT folks printed them out, and the stack was about four inches thick.

Of course, these days, the problem may be instant messaging systems, which don't leave much of a trace. That's one reason most companies prohibit them entirely.

Brad Forrister
Director of Publishing
M. Lee Smith Publishers

njjel · April 2003

Interesting information Brad! Best practice though seems to be to just stay away from personal emails at work since they just might be "watching".

valentine · April 2003

We give employees notice a day or so ahead. That way they can't say they didn't know. EE think they can erase things from their computer but you'd be amazed at what we've been able to find. Our goal isn't to try and "catch" people but just to be sure the computers are being used reasonably. We don't discipline staff for personal e-mails unless they are excessive and the person has other performance issues that could be related to it such as lowered productivity or they are going to inappropriate sites. If an ee occasionally goes to an occasional harmless site we don't do anything.

Valentine

MrCreosote · April 2003

I suggest that you not give any merit at all to the false notion that employees have some right of privacy regarding e-mail. It's done on a company computer which is part of a company network and everything on it is company property, period. Giving employees notice that things will be checked, I think, reinforces the employees' mistaken belief that the e-mails are protected by some type of privacy. If they have absolutely no expectation of privacy things stay pretty clean. (We're on a network so it's easy for IT to monitor e-mails. If people are dialing in that might be trickier.)

valentine · April 2003

It was at the suggestion of our legal counsel that we give the notice. I agree, I would not give notice; however, I guess there have been cases argued, etc.

Valentine

Dutch2 · April 2003

We also have a policy of no personal emails and it is the responsibility of our Network Administator first thing each morning to scan through all the emails that this place generates to see if anyone is sending personal emails. I have had the opporutnity to present a dozen or so counseling forms to EE's because they used the companies systems for personal reasons. I even had to terminate the employment of one of our officers for such practice. Nothing like a good firing of a prominent EE to get folks to behave, for awhile anyway. We also have strong restrictions on internet usuage. Each employee must have a valid business reason to have access to the internet. Probably less than 20% of our employees that have a personal computer on their desk have access to the internet. We also do not allow personal information such as garage sales, birthday wishes, fund raisers, etc. on our email system. We have a weekly business news letter that has a section for such stuff. So far the program is working farily well. It is amazing what the newwork guy can pull up even when the EE thought it was long gone. If you like I will email you a copy of our policy.
Good luck.
Dutch2

Leslie · April 2003

Sounds like you have Hitler in charge of your email/internet policy. If people want to send a letter, can they put it in your out going mail????

OHI182 · April 2003

I agree. Sometimes micro-managing can cost the company more money than the original problem itself.

MrCreosote · April 2003

I agree that it sounds too harsh, but I'm sure your IT manager would point out that it is his/her job to protect the system and to keep it running. Since most viruses come in via personal e-mail it is their responsibility to limit it. Since recent viruses have attacked Outlook address books and sent the virus to all of the addresses contained, your employee increases the risk to his/her employer simply by having their company e-mail address out there in the address books of others.
E-mail is just a tiny portion of our computer network, which supports the entire business. If a virus gets in it can mess up everything, not just the email. You have to consider what it would cost to shut down your business for a day. To place everything at risk, even a remote risk, so that employees can send their friends dumb jokes, is absurd.
I think it's unfair to call the IT person Hitler for doing his/her job. They will be held accountable, after all, if things go wrong.

SMace · May 2003

Does your company consider your time on this forum business? If not you better watch out.

lnelson · May 2003

Valentine,

Would it be possible to email me a copy of your computer usage policy apparently, ours is a little weak.

Thank You.

[email]Lisa@amberwoodproducts.com[/email]

valentine · May 2003

I'd be happy to.

non-work related emails

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