If your company is monitoring employees' use of email, it could damage your company's reputation. However, if your company is not monitoring employees' use of email, it could damage your company's reputation.
PR professionals walk a fine line in communicating and smoothing company policies concerning Internet and email use. Petroleum giant Chevron suffered publicly when a few workers circulated two co-workers' email titled "25 Reasons Why Beer is Better than Women." Others considered the message offensive and took the company to court, winning a $2.2 million settlement.
"If an employer doesn't institute a policy that prohibits employees from using the Web for personal reasons, and that employee downloads an objectionable graphic and sends it to others, an outside third party may think it was done under the belief that it was within the scope of the employee's employment and therefore the employer should be liable," says lawyer Mark Schreiber, partner for the labor and employment department in the Boston-based law firm of Palmer & Dodge.
Articulating how employees use the company email or Internet can help stave off lawsuits. But denying personal use of the Web would definitely thin the employee herd within most companies. This past holiday season, over half of the Internet Christmas shopping was done from the workplace. And scores shoot off dozens of emails daily keeping current with friends and relatives.
Liaison with Employees
When communicating your company's Internet usage policy, keep the ROI in mind. Losses due to workers surfing while on the clock are estimated to be $3 million a year for each 1000 employees, reports the U.S. Department of Labor. Employees need to know facts like these to better understand why monitoring is needed. Surprisingly few feathers get ruffled when employees are told ahead of time that they are being observed. Ninety four percent of the employees from 44 Fortune 100 companies surveyed by PC World Online agreed to being monitored, as long as they were informed first. A mere 4.1% disagreed with the whole process of monitoring.
So an overwhelming majority will listen when you reinforce that the PC on their desk, just like the telephone, is a business tool paid for by the company. And just as telephone bills are reviewed to ensure appropriate usage, same goes with the Internet.
Informing the Brass
Often, executives become so busy monitoring changes in the bottom line that they fail to notice obvious snafu's in the day-to-day running of the office. It's the job of the internal communications expert to notify them of potential problems brewing along the horizon. In the case of informing CEOs about needing or upgrading an Internet policy, Elron Software Inc, outlines what one should entail:
- Employees may only download software from the Web that has a business use.
- Employees releasing protected information via a newsgroup or chat - whether or not the release is inadvertent - will be subject to all penalties under existing data security policies and procedures.
- Employees may not upload any software licensed to the company or data owned or licensed by the company without explicit authorization from the manager responsible for the software or data.
Again, having a monitoring policy and not communicating it can subject your company to litigation and potential public embarrassment. "Employee claims can come from a variety of sources," says Schreiber. "Invasion of privacy, defamation, even some Civil Rights apply. There is no end to the range of claims people bring against companies by either present or former employees."
(Mark Schreiber, 617/573-0585, [email protected]; Nicole Vodian, 781/993-6296, www.elronsoftware.com.)
Potential Liabilities
- One employee in 10 admits to receiving emails with confidential information on it about an outside company.
- Over 85% of employees admit to sending/receiving personal emails at work. Of those, over 60% admit to receiving adult-oriented personal emails in the workplace. And over 55% of those who received such messages admitted to them being sexist or racist.
- One in two employees say they frequently surf the Web for personal reasons at work.
- One in three employees frequently download software for personal reasons at work.
- Sixty-two percent of companies found employees accessing sex sites.
Source: NFO Worldwide for Elron Software.