Start-up network admins read this:
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Bradml wrote:
I just happen to be the boss and I would certainly hope that never happens.
If you are the boss, then why don't you tell your network admin to stop being the FCC?
Bradml wrote:
Anyway I think that encouraging employees to bring in there own equipment that is completely non work related would have a negative effect on productivity.
It is not exactly "encouraging", it is simply leaving that as an option. But using the company's pc for non work related activities is better? This would be sending a mixed message that successful managers can not and do not practice. If you want to increase productivity then create an environment that makes it difficult but not entirely eliminate non work related activities. Why are office pools illegal but everyone participates in them for $. Because the law is there to enforce abuse. If someone is abusing then the team takes the hit. One bad apple can spoil the bunch. When I was in bootcamp if one person made a major mistake the entire company would have to pay the consequences. We were a team.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
JoeSox wrote:
If you are the boss, then why don't you tell your network admin to stop being the FCC?
My networks are not filtered, but I do a lot of on site work for customers that do do it. Actually successful managers keep their employees motivated whilst still productive. A team is exactly what you achieve by not creating an "us and them" mentality between the admins and the developers. We are all part of a company and our roles are all critical.
Brad Australian - peterchen on "Who has the worst keyboard" Keyboard? Ha! I throw magnets over the RAM chips!
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Shog9 wrote:
Well, maybe he knows it, maybe he doesn't. But he was hired to manage the network, not give grief to others.
I agree. But what is a net admin to do when Doctors start reading Newsweeks and are always late for operations forcing the scheduled operating rooms to get behind scheduled operating times? The net admin knew this for 6 months but the Head Doctor and Head of operating room staff person finally find out of the problem and talk to the net admin?? net admin hands are tied, the situation has grown into an abuse at this point. If there were cigarette admins perhaps we would all see the world differently but their isn't cigarette admins.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
JoeSox wrote:
But what is a net admin to do when Doctors start reading Newsweeks and are always late for operations forcing the scheduled operating rooms to get behind scheduled operating times?
Well, if surgeons are late, that's a problem regardless of why. I'd say the first thing to do in that case is to bring the slow slicer in and ask, "what's up?" Maybe if you get Harry Seldon as your adviser you can keep things running smoothly by subtly tweaking things and never actually talking to individual people about what their problems are... but this is Real Life. ;)
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It appears that everybody is under the impression that I approve of the documentation. You probably also blame Ken Burns for supporting slavery.
--Raymond Chen on MSDN
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JoeSox wrote:
If you are the boss, then why don't you tell your network admin to stop being the FCC?
My networks are not filtered, but I do a lot of on site work for customers that do do it. Actually successful managers keep their employees motivated whilst still productive. A team is exactly what you achieve by not creating an "us and them" mentality between the admins and the developers. We are all part of a company and our roles are all critical.
Brad Australian - peterchen on "Who has the worst keyboard" Keyboard? Ha! I throw magnets over the RAM chips!
Bradml wrote:
My networks are not filtered, but I do a lot of on site work for customers that do do it.
Right, these are not your employees you are talking about. Sorry, that wasn't clear or a detail that slipped by me.
Bradml wrote:
Actually successful managers keep their employees motivated whilst still productive.
They also get forced to stop abusive behavior or prevent abusive behavior from happening.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
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Bradml wrote:
My networks are not filtered, but I do a lot of on site work for customers that do do it.
Right, these are not your employees you are talking about. Sorry, that wasn't clear or a detail that slipped by me.
Bradml wrote:
Actually successful managers keep their employees motivated whilst still productive.
They also get forced to stop abusive behavior or prevent abusive behavior from happening.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
JoeSox wrote:
They also get forced to stop abusive behavior or prevent abusive behavior from happening.
I'm sorry, I don;t see how this is related.
Brad Australian - peterchen on "Who has the worst keyboard" Keyboard? Ha! I throw magnets over the RAM chips!
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JoeSox wrote:
But what is a net admin to do when Doctors start reading Newsweeks and are always late for operations forcing the scheduled operating rooms to get behind scheduled operating times?
Well, if surgeons are late, that's a problem regardless of why. I'd say the first thing to do in that case is to bring the slow slicer in and ask, "what's up?" Maybe if you get Harry Seldon as your adviser you can keep things running smoothly by subtly tweaking things and never actually talking to individual people about what their problems are... but this is Real Life. ;)
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It appears that everybody is under the impression that I approve of the documentation. You probably also blame Ken Burns for supporting slavery.
--Raymond Chen on MSDN
Shog9 wrote:
Well, if surgeons are late, that's a problem regardless of why. I'd say the first thing to do in that case is to bring the slow slicer in and ask, "what's up?"
This person is the net admin, why would he care if doctors are late until someone forces him to do something. In all probablility, he is busy putting out other important network fires.
Shog9 wrote:
Maybe if you get Harry Seldon as your adviser you can keep things running smoothly by subtly tweaking things and never actually talking to individual people about what their problems are... but this is Real Life.
Oh, like a reality tv show?:)
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
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Agreed, you are there to work. But I know how much work it can be to sit on a chair and code for hours and hours on end. You have to admit that every now and again you want to just take a tiny break. Here is something you can relate to, I have been to companies that block websites based on its popularity. This means that CP would have been blocked LONG ago. [COMPLETELY OT] I read your blog about web standards and you seem to have had exactly the same idea I had. I am considering writing a draft of a new standard and see what kind of interest it picks up. Would you be interested in helping out with it on a later date?
Brad Australian - unknown PHP Developer on "Job Prospect" Requirement: * Experience working with XML, XSL, XPath Comment: and other things starting with X.
Bradml wrote:
Here is something you can relate to, I have been to companies that block websites based on its popularity. This means that CP would have been blocked LONG ago.
Yeah, there are some businesses that take it too far or use the wrong tools. I know one place I worked at blocked DejaVu (been so long since Google bought them I don't remember the domain for sure). After a while they got their head out of their lower parts to allow access to it :)
Bradml wrote:
I read your blog about web standards and you seem to have had exactly the same idea I had. I am considering writing a draft of a new standard and see what kind of interest it picks up. Would you be interested in helping out with it on a later date?
Sure, just drop me a note. I plan to look more into WPF/E in a few months. I know WPF sure has a lot of nice features and their box model is pretty cool.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: 20 Years to Web standards or a New Dream? Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
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Rocky Moore wrote:
It has nothing to do with quality, you say you are not happy there, so you should find a place were you are.
That's not strictly true. I said there are aspects of the job i'm not happy with and can't seem to change - that doesn't mean i'm done trying yet. At some point, i'll either figure out a way to change them or i'll scrap the job and find another - possibly not the best way of handling things, but that's how i work. I have great co-workers, excellent flexibility, and good insurance - these things are worth a lot to me.
Rocky Moore wrote:
So, do you tell your employer that you are just playing around for a while until you get back to work? If you employer is happy with that, it is one thing, but if it is done without their knowledge and they think you are working then it is plain theft!
If i'm needed for something, i'm always available - i make sure of that. As for theft... I'm salaried - some weeks i'll put in maybe 20 hours of solid effort, other weeks it's closer to 80. There are days i do little beyond replying to email, and days i don't sleep. I guarantee you they're getting their money's worth regardless.
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It appears that everybody is under the impression that I approve of the documentation. You probably also blame Ken Burns for supporting slavery.
--Raymond Chen on MSDN
Shog9 wrote:
I have great co-workers, excellent flexibility, and good insurance - these things are worth a lot to me.
Yeah, to most people :)
Shog9 wrote:
I guarantee you they're getting their money's worth regardless.
Well, this is the point. As long as the business comes out ahead, that is great. There are those that do not though and only put in 30 hours of work for a 40 hour week then complain if asked to put in some extra time. From the sound of it, you are more like on flex time, take here give there.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: 20 Years to Web standards or a New Dream? Latest Tech Blog Post: Corel Lightning - what is the plan?
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JoeSox wrote:
They also get forced to stop abusive behavior or prevent abusive behavior from happening.
I'm sorry, I don;t see how this is related.
Brad Australian - peterchen on "Who has the worst keyboard" Keyboard? Ha! I throw magnets over the RAM chips!
Bradml wrote:
I'm sorry, I don;t see how this is related.
Well that's obvious.:rolleyes: Here, check these[^] stats out. Its an older document but I bet todays numbers of even worse.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
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Bradml wrote:
I'm sorry, I don;t see how this is related.
Well that's obvious.:rolleyes: Here, check these[^] stats out. Its an older document but I bet todays numbers of even worse.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
Two things:
- That is not exactly the most credible source as they are trying to sell something through that document.
- I agree, sexual or abusive content is unacceptable in the workplace and should not ever be tolerated.
That being said that does not change the fact that employees should not have websites blocked (apart from pornographic ones)
Brad Australian - unknown PHP Developer on "Job Prospect" Requirement: * Experience working with XML, XSL, XPath Comment: and other things starting with X.
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Ok I have seen this in way too many companies in the last couple days: website blocking. Guys this is not right, it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers. I am not saying that you cannot block anything, in fact i have a long list of what you can block:
- Pornography
After that there is nothing that truly justifies blocking. Buy I hear screaming.... "What about productivity".... well I will tell you how I handle this: I monitor the browsing habits of every employee. This means I can get the amount of time that is spent browsing certain websites and I graph it all. Then I spend a couple minutes every week looking through the graphs and look for the high browsing activity. If this happens to be MySpace then I look at which employees are using it the most and make a note of it. If this happens continually I just have a casual conversation with them and ask they don't visit the site as much. Now I have hardly had to do that because they know I will pick it up on it and also they are generally a great bunch anyway. One thing to be careful about here is that you may upset an employee if you come out of the blue and tell them to stop reading so many emails, so just use tact. Also it helps to do it in a group without specifying certain people. Does anyone have a strict network administrator?
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers.
It sure does, and whats more important is that it does not work. At least a few employees will be able to bypass it without having *broken* any rules (unmoitored gateways, proxies, torr etc). - sajith m
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Well if I get hit by a "This page has been Blocked" message and it isn't met with a damn good explanation then I stop working, walk to the IT managers office and ask for an administrator account. Also there are guys who work 14 hour days regularly, can you really deny them a bit of R&R every now and then? It actually increases productivity and motivation.
JoeSox wrote:
500 companies can't afford to loose stock price and they have good lawyers to back them up.
:wtf: Care to explain that?
JoeSox wrote:
Its business not a feel good love meeting.
If it were a "feel good love meeting" then of course there would be no blocking.... or pants for that matter, but I am approaching this from a strictly business point of view. I find it rude for employers to treat employees like they are children who do not take work seriously. I know that sometimes employees abuse this but you can easily catch this and the benefits from responsible employees' motivation is enormous.
Brad Australian - Me on "Public interest" If you actually read this let me know.
This page is blocked
REASON: You should be working right now. If you need to access http://www.youtube.com/FXHWDB for work related reasons, please contact Joe
I agree that blocking creates distrust, and when someone wants to slack off, she will. OTOH not every company wants to set the resources aside to monitor e-mail and browsing activity as closely as you do, and the net can be a huge productivity sucker.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Velopers, Develprs, Developers!
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
Linkify!|Fold With Us! -
Two things:
- That is not exactly the most credible source as they are trying to sell something through that document.
- I agree, sexual or abusive content is unacceptable in the workplace and should not ever be tolerated.
That being said that does not change the fact that employees should not have websites blocked (apart from pornographic ones)
Brad Australian - unknown PHP Developer on "Job Prospect" Requirement: * Experience working with XML, XSL, XPath Comment: and other things starting with X.
I think you are missing the main point. What do you suppose to do at work ? Yes, right.....work. When a company blocks websites that are not related to work (sexual, video, chat etc..etc..). It says more about the employees then the company. Appearantly the employees don't have the common sense to do some private surfing at home. You get paid to work, not to be "at" work.
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Ok I have seen this in way too many companies in the last couple days: website blocking. Guys this is not right, it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers. I am not saying that you cannot block anything, in fact i have a long list of what you can block:
- Pornography
After that there is nothing that truly justifies blocking. Buy I hear screaming.... "What about productivity".... well I will tell you how I handle this: I monitor the browsing habits of every employee. This means I can get the amount of time that is spent browsing certain websites and I graph it all. Then I spend a couple minutes every week looking through the graphs and look for the high browsing activity. If this happens to be MySpace then I look at which employees are using it the most and make a note of it. If this happens continually I just have a casual conversation with them and ask they don't visit the site as much. Now I have hardly had to do that because they know I will pick it up on it and also they are generally a great bunch anyway. One thing to be careful about here is that you may upset an employee if you come out of the blue and tell them to stop reading so many emails, so just use tact. Also it helps to do it in a group without specifying certain people. Does anyone have a strict network administrator?
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
If the guy is not meeting his goals, then find out why. If he is meeting his goals let him browse porn as much as he wants and leave him the heck alone.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Two things:
- That is not exactly the most credible source as they are trying to sell something through that document.
- I agree, sexual or abusive content is unacceptable in the workplace and should not ever be tolerated.
That being said that does not change the fact that employees should not have websites blocked (apart from pornographic ones)
Brad Australian - unknown PHP Developer on "Job Prospect" Requirement: * Experience working with XML, XSL, XPath Comment: and other things starting with X.
Couldn't agree more with Brad on this; in my role, we're permitted some R&R and given a degree of freedom. In return, I choose to work past my contracted hours and generally give the company back a degree of flexibity. Works well for us both. I've also worked in an environment that was locked down; the commitment from the employees was a lot less, and the morale much lower. After a couple of years, I decided to move to an employer who treats me with respect... now, I write more code, probably of better quality, and enjoy doing it.
-- What's a signature?
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Ok I have seen this in way too many companies in the last couple days: website blocking. Guys this is not right, it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers. I am not saying that you cannot block anything, in fact i have a long list of what you can block:
- Pornography
After that there is nothing that truly justifies blocking. Buy I hear screaming.... "What about productivity".... well I will tell you how I handle this: I monitor the browsing habits of every employee. This means I can get the amount of time that is spent browsing certain websites and I graph it all. Then I spend a couple minutes every week looking through the graphs and look for the high browsing activity. If this happens to be MySpace then I look at which employees are using it the most and make a note of it. If this happens continually I just have a casual conversation with them and ask they don't visit the site as much. Now I have hardly had to do that because they know I will pick it up on it and also they are generally a great bunch anyway. One thing to be careful about here is that you may upset an employee if you come out of the blue and tell them to stop reading so many emails, so just use tact. Also it helps to do it in a group without specifying certain people. Does anyone have a strict network administrator?
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
I used to run IT for a small company that I was also a shareholder in. Most of the staff were good and we allowed some personal use of the internet and initially we had no blocking tools. However, some staff started to take liberties and would spend two or three hours a day (and sometimes more) on non-work sites, despite this being a busy small company with lots of work to do. So we installed WebSense and blocked most clearly non-work sites except first thing in the morning, lunchtime and evenings. We allowed quota-managed access of 1 hour a day for non-work related stuff. I had absolutely no problems doing this - spending half you working day on non-work browsing etc. is unfair to the staff that did not and costs our company money - why should I pay people to do this? To be honest if they had objected strongly to the restrictions we would have fired them.
'Howard
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Ok I have seen this in way too many companies in the last couple days: website blocking. Guys this is not right, it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers. I am not saying that you cannot block anything, in fact i have a long list of what you can block:
- Pornography
After that there is nothing that truly justifies blocking. Buy I hear screaming.... "What about productivity".... well I will tell you how I handle this: I monitor the browsing habits of every employee. This means I can get the amount of time that is spent browsing certain websites and I graph it all. Then I spend a couple minutes every week looking through the graphs and look for the high browsing activity. If this happens to be MySpace then I look at which employees are using it the most and make a note of it. If this happens continually I just have a casual conversation with them and ask they don't visit the site as much. Now I have hardly had to do that because they know I will pick it up on it and also they are generally a great bunch anyway. One thing to be careful about here is that you may upset an employee if you come out of the blue and tell them to stop reading so many emails, so just use tact. Also it helps to do it in a group without specifying certain people. Does anyone have a strict network administrator?
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
At work we can't go to any of the social networking sites, can't get to any gaming sites, can't get to a lot of "forums" (depends on how they're configured), can't generally get to any blog sites, etc. HOWEVER, if I VPN out, I am effectively invisible to the LAN (and conversely, I can't get to any network resources, likeeamil, shared drives/printers, etc) and can browse anyplace I want to. The local system admin can see my VPN connection, but not what I'm doing in it. :)
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
Ok I have seen this in way too many companies in the last couple days: website blocking. Guys this is not right, it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers. I am not saying that you cannot block anything, in fact i have a long list of what you can block:
- Pornography
After that there is nothing that truly justifies blocking. Buy I hear screaming.... "What about productivity".... well I will tell you how I handle this: I monitor the browsing habits of every employee. This means I can get the amount of time that is spent browsing certain websites and I graph it all. Then I spend a couple minutes every week looking through the graphs and look for the high browsing activity. If this happens to be MySpace then I look at which employees are using it the most and make a note of it. If this happens continually I just have a casual conversation with them and ask they don't visit the site as much. Now I have hardly had to do that because they know I will pick it up on it and also they are generally a great bunch anyway. One thing to be careful about here is that you may upset an employee if you come out of the blue and tell them to stop reading so many emails, so just use tact. Also it helps to do it in a group without specifying certain people. Does anyone have a strict network administrator?
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
In our company, all web access is logged, and the logs are freely viewable by anyone. Remarkably, there are still people stupid enough to browse porn at work :rolleyes:.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Two things:
- That is not exactly the most credible source as they are trying to sell something through that document.
- I agree, sexual or abusive content is unacceptable in the workplace and should not ever be tolerated.
That being said that does not change the fact that employees should not have websites blocked (apart from pornographic ones)
Brad Australian - unknown PHP Developer on "Job Prospect" Requirement: * Experience working with XML, XSL, XPath Comment: and other things starting with X.
Brad, You clearly have never owned your own business. An employee does not have an "right" to do anything besides work when they are at work and on shift, and take appropriate breaks. Just because you are on a break does not mean that your employer must provide you with access to the Internet over the company network either. If your attitude is different, you wouldn't be working for us. That being said, no employer (in their right mind) wants to waste time policing you, and if you were the kind of employee that had to be reminded to be working instead of screwing off, then you wouldn't be working there long. On the other hand, the valued employee that gets their work done, pulls their weight, and is a team player... well who cares if he is on EBay or MySpace when you walk into his/her office? They get their stuff done, and so clearly they don't need a babysitter. We prefer to hire those that do not require a baby sitter. :)
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Brad, You clearly have never owned your own business. An employee does not have an "right" to do anything besides work when they are at work and on shift, and take appropriate breaks. Just because you are on a break does not mean that your employer must provide you with access to the Internet over the company network either. If your attitude is different, you wouldn't be working for us. That being said, no employer (in their right mind) wants to waste time policing you, and if you were the kind of employee that had to be reminded to be working instead of screwing off, then you wouldn't be working there long. On the other hand, the valued employee that gets their work done, pulls their weight, and is a team player... well who cares if he is on EBay or MySpace when you walk into his/her office? They get their stuff done, and so clearly they don't need a babysitter. We prefer to hire those that do not require a baby sitter. :)
Stick^ wrote:
You clearly have never owned your own business.
Hmm... Well the fact that I do serves to contradict that staement.
Stick^ wrote:
An employee does not have an "right" to do anything besides work when they are at work
Thankyou for the 101 course on employee rights. Now lets move away from the textbook and move into something called "Employee Motivation". You see, in the world of business a company is only as successful as its employees work. No amount of firing will compensate for bad management. Also someone who think for a moment that employees can just sit and code non stop without decent psychological breaks is a fool. That is how poor code is written and how you have a problematic development teams. I have dealt with some real idiots in my time who still think businesses succeed by cheating their employees. Anyway your management ideas may work for you and I'm sure your employees will remain loyal to you regardless of the obvious walls you have put up between yourself and them.
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
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Ok I have seen this in way too many companies in the last couple days: website blocking. Guys this is not right, it inspires distrust and a us and them mentality between management and workers. I am not saying that you cannot block anything, in fact i have a long list of what you can block:
- Pornography
After that there is nothing that truly justifies blocking. Buy I hear screaming.... "What about productivity".... well I will tell you how I handle this: I monitor the browsing habits of every employee. This means I can get the amount of time that is spent browsing certain websites and I graph it all. Then I spend a couple minutes every week looking through the graphs and look for the high browsing activity. If this happens to be MySpace then I look at which employees are using it the most and make a note of it. If this happens continually I just have a casual conversation with them and ask they don't visit the site as much. Now I have hardly had to do that because they know I will pick it up on it and also they are generally a great bunch anyway. One thing to be careful about here is that you may upset an employee if you come out of the blue and tell them to stop reading so many emails, so just use tact. Also it helps to do it in a group without specifying certain people. Does anyone have a strict network administrator?
Brad Australian - Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript" A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.
Cool approach :cool: