Employers crack down on email and internet misuse
Half of UK employers surveyed recently by IRS have disciplined employees for misuse of email and the internet at work.
Misuse ranges from simple time wasting to downloading and circulating pornography. Around one in five employers surveyed has dismissed staff as a result of their abuse of email or the internet over the past 12 months.
A majority of respondents to the IRS survey have a written policy dealing with email and internet use in the workplace. Many of these policies are broader in scope, with one in three covering the use of personal mobile phones in the workplace, and one in six instituting a ban on the use of cameras and camera phones.
Email and internet policies: Cracking down on misuse By Lyn Whitfield, writing in IRS Employment Review. The survey is based on responses from 63 organisations, together employing just under 106,000 staff.
Also
Written
evidence Writing in Training Magazine, Ross Bentley
investigates how employers can benefit from investing in training staff on the
use of email.
Email policies must cover circulation of
messages Policies on acceptable email use should include
provisions limiting the widespread dissemination of messages, as the escape of
internal emails into the public domain can potentially attract both adverse
publicity and legal claims.
The law on
email monitoring Writing on personneltoday.com, James Elwes looks at
what the law says about employers clamping down on email abuse.
Employee monitoring in focus
IRS reviews part three of the Data Protection Code of Practice,
which covers monitoring employees in the workplace. The Code covers areas such
as opening workers' emails, the use of closed-circuit television, monitoring
internet usage and videoing workers outside the workplace to collect
evidence.
ACAS issues
guide to email and internet policies HR & Compliance Centre reports.
How to
protect against issues arising from employee email and internet use
Practical guidance from HR & Compliance Centre's How to
service.