Start-up network admins read this:
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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:
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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.
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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
Howard Richards wrote:
To be honest if they had objected strongly to the restrictions we would have fired them.
If you thought they were being that non-productive, why didn't you just fire them in the first place?
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
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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
JoeSox wrote:
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle
Considering your position in this thread, I find your signature highly ironic.
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
-
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.
Try working for the government. I work on as a software engineer on a US Air Force base and we can't get to a bunch of stuff, including: 1) Any freeware/shareware sites (makes finding code samples a tad difficult) 2) Any email sites (Yahoo, webmail, etc) 3) Anything remotely "adult" oriented, including many sites with blogs 4) The best... any ActiveX, Flash, Java or other "active" content from anything but a .MIL or .GOV domain. The web pages comes up, but the controls on the page are replaced with a "removed" message. Yeah, it's a very limited internet capability here due to Uncle Sam's overly zealous security measures.
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JoeSox wrote:
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle
Considering your position in this thread, I find your signature highly ironic.
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
Grimolfr wrote:
Considering your position in this thread, I find your signature highly ironic.
The topic is: abuse of employer property and the costs to the employer. If ones pleasure is coming from an abuse, that is not really what my sig quote is about.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
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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.
Bradml wrote:
That is not exactly the most credible source as they are trying to sell something through that document.
That was not my point. You stated you didn't understand what I was talking about (abuse of employer property and its cost to the employer) That document has many facts nomatter whom the publisher is to display what I was talking about.
Bradml wrote:
I agree, sexual or abusive content is unacceptable in the workplace and should not ever be tolerated.
What about the other points?
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
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Howard Richards wrote:
To be honest if they had objected strongly to the restrictions we would have fired them.
If you thought they were being that non-productive, why didn't you just fire them in the first place?
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
It was better to remove the access than just fire people immediately. They had a warning about it and then we put in place the blocks. That way they could not commit the 'crime' so we didn't have to worry about what they were up to (at least in one respect!!). They also were able to focus better when they did need to use the web for personal stuff as they knew they had an hour's grace - so they didn't just browse around and lose track of time.
'Howard
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Grimolfr wrote:
Considering your position in this thread, I find your signature highly ironic.
The topic is: abuse of employer property and the costs to the employer. If ones pleasure is coming from an abuse, that is not really what my sig quote is about.
Later, JoeSox "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." -Aristotle CPMCv1.0 ↔ humanaiproject.org ↔ Last.fm
JoeSox wrote:
The topic is: abuse of employer property and the costs to the employer.
And therein lies your problem. You don't get what this thread is really about, which is an employer's responsibility NOT to treat their employees like indentured servants for 40+ hours a week. I imagine that if you really run your business the way you talk, you probably have a very difficult time retaining talented personnel.
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
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Shog just happens to be a valuable asset to any company, regardless of how happy he is...
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.
You know, I don't know where the sales guy got the virus that almost hosed our whole network, but he doesn't need to go to porn sites at work. I block those sites now because I honestly believe it was a mistake, and I also think it could happen again. It's not a matter of distrust of their intentions... it's a matter of distrust of their ability to stay away from harmful web sites. I don't do it to keep people off certain sites. Actually I prefer it when people can check out Myspace or the CodeProject Lounge during the day to break up the boredom. And I think it's actually good for productivity for people to have access to things like their personal email, bank accounts, bill pay, and that kind of stuff, because it keeps them from leaving the office to take care of that. I just don't want them doing stupid things with their computers and I don't have time to make everybody an expert on security. I prefer your method though (the OP method)... what do you use to do your analysis?
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
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.
- Productivity. There are numerous studies (rather than opinions) about what impacts productivity. Morale is one I believe (which would seem to be common sense.) I suspect a company that spends time blocking is probably going to have other policies that are likely to produce lower moral than that of other companies. I do note that companies are more than willing to make decisions about productivity without any real evidence of the impact yet are unwilling to make the choices necessary to implement those things that actually have the evidence that demonstrates increased productivity. One of those that comes to mind is that private offices lead to increased productivity in software developement. How many cube farms and shared offices have you seen? - Bringing in a laptop. Just as a rather obnoxious analogy I note that some companies in the past have attempted to restrict bathroom breaks (even in non manufacturing environments) in the name of 'productivity'. Would you suggest that everyone impacted by such a rule as that, and able to afford it of course, should bring in a port-a-potty every day? - Time management Taking a 15 minute break is of course something that someone can do. However what if I happen to be waiting for a long running test that takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes to run? I can of course just sit there and stare at the screen mindlessly. Or take a 15 minute walk which means that if the test completes in 10 minutes then I will miss those extra 5 minutes. Not to mention that a 15 minute walk means going outside unless perhaps you are suggesting that everyone should pace the corridors like a large cat in a zoo? And once outdoors what do you suppose that the reality is for a company with low moral that the walk is going to be limited to 15 minutes? - Management If management can't effectively guage the productivity of its workers then that sounds like a management failure. That is such a basic failure for a company that it would suggest that the management of such a company is failing completely. And that is going to have more of an impact on the bottom line of a company than any negative press. Of course blaming the internet or media or water cooler conversations (etc, etc...) is a time honored occupation amoung poor managers used to deflect focus from their own poor skills. Effective management doesn't need to look for excuses for why productivity is low, because it isn't low. At well managed companies employees are spending time happily doing their job a
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You know, I don't know where the sales guy got the virus that almost hosed our whole network, but he doesn't need to go to porn sites at work. I block those sites now because I honestly believe it was a mistake, and I also think it could happen again. It's not a matter of distrust of their intentions... it's a matter of distrust of their ability to stay away from harmful web sites. I don't do it to keep people off certain sites. Actually I prefer it when people can check out Myspace or the CodeProject Lounge during the day to break up the boredom. And I think it's actually good for productivity for people to have access to things like their personal email, bank accounts, bill pay, and that kind of stuff, because it keeps them from leaving the office to take care of that. I just don't want them doing stupid things with their computers and I don't have time to make everybody an expert on security. I prefer your method though (the OP method)... what do you use to do your analysis?
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
Try working for the government. I work on as a software engineer on a US Air Force base and we can't get to a bunch of stuff, including: 1) Any freeware/shareware sites (makes finding code samples a tad difficult) 2) Any email sites (Yahoo, webmail, etc) 3) Anything remotely "adult" oriented, including many sites with blogs 4) The best... any ActiveX, Flash, Java or other "active" content from anything but a .MIL or .GOV domain. The web pages comes up, but the controls on the page are replaced with a "removed" message. Yeah, it's a very limited internet capability here due to Uncle Sam's overly zealous security measures.
PSU Steve wrote:
Try working for the government. I work on as a software engineer on a US Air Force base and we can't get to a bunch of stuff,
It is possible of course that that is merely a security rather than a productivity issue. For the US gov and many US state govs doing anything on a government owned computer that is not work related is a criminal offense. I believe at least with the US gov that it can be prosecuted as a felony. And it has been that way for something like 30 years. So in terms of productivity it would seem more effective (productivity) to merely gather the group together and tell them that accessing web email at lunch can get them 5 years in prison.
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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
Howard Richards wrote:
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?
Hmmm...I just spent 8 months working 60+ hour work weeks and I got one comp day. At another company I spent 18 months working 60+ hour work weeks and I got three unofficial comp days. Both were salaried positions of course. So presumably to provide fairness for all, when people work extra hours at your company you insist long and hard that they get paid overtime or are provided the equivalent comp (and usable comp time)?
Howard Richards wrote:
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.
Presumably you consider that those employees were not doing their job correctly. So what exactly were the manager(s) of those employees doing? Why did you not consider that the manager of those employees was not being an effective manager? If that is not the point of being a manager then what is?