Labour law | Internet control: Should you ban websites in the workplace?

By Anna Malczyk

Companies have responded in a variety of ways to employees spending time on social networking websites. Some have taken internet control to its pinnacle and banned Facebook, Twitter and other sites completely. Others restrict access during certain times of the day, or monitor employees’ activity and caution over-users. On the other hand some companies endorse and encourage social media usage.

Here are some of the pros and cons of banning social networking websites in your workplace.

Pros of internet control
1. Can increase productivity
Some employees get completely distracted by updating and browsing their social networking profiles, and can lose hours or productive time without realising it. In some cases, banning these websites can increase work efficiency. In addition, the constant flow of updates, instant messages and personal emails can break employees’ concentration and prevent them from focusing on a task fully.

2. Decreased data costs
Restricting or banning media-heavy websites like Facebook and YouTube can benefit the company by reducing bandwidth costs. Even a short online video can be 3MB in size, and a few videos a day multiplied by the number of employees can quickly lead to spiralling data fees. Giving each employee a monthly data cap can also be effective.

3. Fewer security and privacy risks
Many companies dread their employees sharing private, confidential work information over social networks (and well they should, since it happens often with embarrassing or damaging results). While blocking social networks at work won’t prevent employees from broadcasting the messages from home, it does allow them to cool down and think more carefully about what they write.

Cons of internet control
1. Employee dissatisfaction
Employees who are unable to keep in touch with friends and family while at work, generally for eight or more hours a day, will be less satisfied and happy in their jobs. Today’s networked culture has made connectivity and immediacy very important, and being forced out of the loop can make employees angry and disheartened.

2. Can decrease productivity
Along with dissatisfaction comes decreased productivity. Unhappy employees are generally less productive and more likely to act against the company’s interests than contented ones, and work efficiency suffers. Also, studies have shown that taking a ten-minute online break relaxes and refreshes the employee, allowing them to be more productive afterwards.

3. Can’t beat them? Join them!
Realistically, there’s no way to ban each of the hundreds of social networks (and hundreds of millions of blogs) on the web. Aside from cutting employees off completely – which would block access to work websites and email – there isn’t much the company can do. Since internet control is impossible, why not try to co-opt this social networking and let it to work for your business? Create an official Twitter account and encourage employees to retweet the messages. Build a social Page for your company on Facebook, where employees can converse and share. Start an official company blog and allow employees to contribute. In essence, if you become part of your employees’ social spheres, everybody wins.

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license.