In today’s world, you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of businesses that deny internet connectivity to their employees. It has become a necessary tool for doing business. However, for all the positive that the Internet brings into business, as with many things, there can be a downside. On any list of negative impacts the Internet can have in the workplace, employee productivity would probably be close to the top.
Because the benefits of the Internet significantly outweigh the concerns, solutions have been created to address the issue. Restricting access to websites is the logical “solve” for this issue; however, removing this freedom can imply that you don’t trust your employees and you may limit access to information they need to perform their jobs. The best way to solve this issue is by providing guidelines and recommended best practices, but allowing your employees to retain the opportunity to choose what websites they utilize during business hours. Here are a few guidelines to give you a start:
Web Surfing Recommendations
Communicate to your employees that they have unrestricted access to websites because you encourage their use of the Internet while completing job tasks and research. This also allows them to use their free time as they please. Web surfing is a staple in everyday life – connecting with friends and family, setting up appointments, working on personal projects and much more. Checking out of work and into non-work activities can be the perfect break to reenergize and unwind.
Trusting your employees to make the right decisions about how they spend their time at work will enhance confidence, earning you trust in return. Building this type of environment fosters job satisfaction and therefore can increase productivity.
Effect on Bandwidth
General web surfing doesn’t consume much of your network’s bandwidth, but certain sites do, specifically media sharing sites. Research conducted by Spamina.com, found that YouTube alone can consume anywhere from 75 to 90% of your business’s bandwidth. This bandwidth use can affect the productivity of others by interfering with their internet access and other business application’s speed.
Let your employees know that websites, such as YouTube, Netflix, Spotify and other media sharing sites, clog up bandwidth. Also let them know the implications of this bandwidth consumption; that applications and other sites your users depend upon begin to move slower. Request that they limit their time on these sites, if possible, or restrict it to certain times of the day where, historically, Internet isn’t relied upon as heavily.
Security Concerns
Aside from a loss in productivity, there is also the ever-present risk of security breaches. It is important to protect your business data and network from spam and malicious content that can not only expose sensitive information, but slow down productivity. When malicious content infiltrates your business network it can expose client information, employee data and result in costly security breaches.
One way to prevent this is to implement intrusion prevention and detection software (IPS/IDS). These applications block known malicious sites from communicating with your users. They serve as a gateway anti-virus and malware solution that detect and stop malicious code from executing if an employee happens to click on something dangerous. IPS/IDS allows you to protect your network, while limiting the impact it has on employee’s access to websites.
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