Company Policy?

[puppetmaker]

In the policy handbook of many companies today, there are a couple of clauses about Internet usage both on the job and off the job. Most are set up so that if they decide to fire you, they can use your internet usage as just cause since you signed a piece of paper saying that you would abide by the rules of the company. If you share company secrets on your blog or information that they deem proprietary for whatever reason, it is grounds for dismissal. Some go so far as to say that if you bad mouth the company in your web log, it is grounds for dismissal.

What I think some people forget is that many larger companies have tracking software on their mainframes and your keystrokes are being monitored. I was well aware of that the entire time I worked for Randomhouse just because I am very IT aware. But the sites I surfed at work were relevant to my job as an editor gave me a heads up early in my job. Somewhere they probably still have a record of my web usage at RH. I never bad mouthed the company online and I will never do so. Overall I had a very good experience with my time at RH and would be more than willing to work there again.

I think that sharing proprietary information on or off the job is bad form. They are trusting you with the information to do your job. The exception is if something dangerous is going on that could harm people. I remember one case of a drug company that was trying to hide some bad reactions so they could get FDA approval for the drug and someone who worked online and had tried to go through the normal channels to report the problem finally went to the internet to get the word out about the possible harm that could be done.

I take my NDAs very seriously. But what I know would not bring harm to anyone, it is just kind of cool to know before everyone else. The entertainment industry is full of these sorts of things and occasionally someone will mysterious come out of the woodwork with information that the fans goes batty over. Even more so if they are proven right and then they are paid more attention to. Some online bloggers keep their sources very close to the vest so they can get "the scoop". Harry Knowls has made a living at it as had Rich Johnston.

But I have some concerns about the rules about not showing the company in a negative light on the Internet and if you do, they can use that against you to terminate for just cause. This is not on their time at all but your own in your own web log. If you can't complain about the idiots that you work with to your friends, then who can you tell? And the Internet is a place to go talk to your friends. I have noticed that any Disney employee who wants to complain against the Mouse chooses the where and how very carefully so they don't get canned. I haven't heard of anyone getting fired from a com that complains about their job but most couch what they are saying so it is not a direct slam on a particular company so it would be harder to make it stand up in court but I bet it has happened.

So just a friendly warning out there from me to you about something that you might not know that you even did when you signed those papers for HR agreeing to abide by company policy.

I am grateful that my boss lets me complain if I want to.

Comments

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

Sometimes last year or the year before, there was a minor national uproar over a woman who'd been fired from a job she'd had for awhile because she bitched about aspects of it on her blog. Her company, obviously, didn't have blocks on anything, but her coworkers regularly read her blog. I wish I could find a cite for it :(

Anyway, I don't have enough computer access at work for any of this to be an issue. Current Employer does have a general internet block up, though, and will only approve sites which have direct bearing on the company/industry. The general-use computer in the lunchroom only accesses CE's intranet.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Which is how a lot of companies are going. I can remember when RH blocked AOL and Yahoo but had to put Yahoo back because it was being used for business purposes. They also blocked a bunch of MP3 share sites and told everyone that they were dumping any and all MP3 files from the server unless it could be proved that they were in a area in which they needed these files (ie Audio)

It is a tricky thing and I think we are seeing the beginnings of policies that will be in place more firmly when my daughters go to work.

[lanofaylin.livejournal.com]

I love my job and the people I work for and with....so they can put that in thier pipe and smoke it.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

So there :pbpbpbpbppbpbp *grin*

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

Someone was asked to leave my agency over bad mouthing the agency on his blog. On the one hand, it was his blog and on his own time, but what he was saying wasn't about his co-workers or a bad day. He was bad mouthing the agency itself and some of what he was saying just wasn't true. He wasn't fired precisely- if someone calls for a reference, they'll be told that he quit.

It's kind of hairy in our case, because we hold a public trust. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

It is a fine line that must be walked.

I have heard of a case where HR went to the blogger and said, "If you are this unhappy why are you still here?" Which was their gentle push to this person who quit shortly there after.

It is a tricky thing indeed and I pity those who have to deal with it.

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

I seldom talk about my work, and even more rarely talk about it in a public forum (as opposed to FL). I never identify who exactly I work for.

[imafarmgirl.livejournal.com]

Our office has that software that watches your keystrokes unfortunately. I agree that people should be able to complain if they wish, but I think few companies will tolerate it.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

Which is sad.

I think there is a difference between company time and personal time and because of the information age that line has become more and more blurred. When do we have personal time anymore? Especially when we work on projects or answer e-mails over the weekend that are work related.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

The last BF I had was on 24 hour call in an IT job and worked 2 people's worth of work.

I work 40 hours + freelance, but I don't check my work email on the weekend at all. I'm taking a brief break from freelance to work on some personal stuff, so it's more of a hobby than work. I also have a semi-disdain for corporate culture in general, but I may be surprised and find a job somewhere that pays better that I can live with, but I don't know. I feel like some weird hippy.

IMO, if someone needs to be on 24 hour call, 7 days a week, 365 days a year - you need to hire someone else to help cover some of that slack.

And Keyloggers freak me out in general.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I take an enormous issue with companies that regulate internet use after hours or censor what you can say.

NDAs or anything sensitive notwithstanding of course.

I post friends locked rants about some of the more clueless clients in my journal. I've posted flocked gripes about the job, too.

I don't think a company has the right to terminate someone because they have a kvetch* and post it online, I don't think a company had the right to terminate an employee for looking at porn on their own time in the privacy of their homes(unless it's illegal porn, then terminate away), which is a policy some school boards have.

I am strongly against unwritten Internet policies. If you're going to have keyloggers on the corporate computers, I fully believe that it is the right of the employee to know so.

I work in a 3 person office, and sometimes we spend the afternoon looking at lolcats. Yesterday the joke was one of the workmates looking for a syringe to put some oil into a cylinder on his motorbike. he called me over and said 'What about this one?' and he didn't notice he'd landed on a sex toy site and it was a lube applicator. We laughed. And then he decided he'd be better off calling the local vets.

I am grateful to work in an environment that allows us to slack off a little bit if we get our work done and none of our internet is monitored.

*of course this depends on the nature of the kvetch. It's all relative. But 'Grr.. we had no heat in the building AGAIN!" is OK XD

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that if the Internet is being monitors that the employees should KNOW that they are being monitored. It does torque me when it comes up after the fact.

I'm glad that you have the freedom of the internet at work.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

Me too :)

And as much as I hate this litigious society, so long as the employee wasn't doing anything stupid at work (porn) and IS getting their work done, if they get terminated for internet use without the policy having been made available to the employees, they have grounds for a wrongful dismissal suit.

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

It's so easy to go to accidental porn sites. It happens all the time where I work. We just drop an email to the boss that say, "Oops!" No harm, no foul.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

My company does not have a keystroke logger.

I'm friends with the Director of I.T. Infrastructure and I work in I.T. (which is how I know this), but they can monitor where you go and your network traffic.

The thing is that it is almost a full time job to keep up with that stuff alone, so a lot of monitoring is falling by the wayside.

The things of most concern appear to be intellectual property and things that can result in litigation. So some of it is specifically targeted.

All that being said, as the tools come that can remove more and more of the heavy lifting, these policies will become more and more the norm and the rule of "law."

/my 2 cents

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

Let's see, fingerprinting, FBI & BCI checks, having any sort of complaint against you available on a website, getting fired for stuff written on a personal blog - work related or not, paying $200 every 5 years to keep your license. Yup, I'm sure glad to be a teacher in Ohio! ;-)

[querldox.livejournal.com]

A few years back, there was a somewhat well-publicized case of a new employee being fired from the company I was at for what they'd blogged. They, and some outsiders, tried to spin it as "They complained about some aspects of the company, weren't they evil for firing them".

Internally (can't speak for HR itself or their manager), the feeling was "If you're stupid enough to first blog during a known to employees SEC mandated quiet period something like "I was at an internal conference and they said we're doing great financially and have lots of cool stuff about to come out", get warned about it, then blog something similar two days later, we really need to look into how someone this stupid got hired in the first place."

No one cared about their posting "I think my new company's health plan isn't as good as my previous company's"; we did care about him revealing things that could quite likely get us in trouble with the SEC that had nothing to do with whistleblowing or the like.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

That is a totally different situation since that has to do with legal aspects of the job and it could have jeopardized the entire company by the posting. It gained them nothing except some bragging points which could have caused a federal agency to investigate.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Yep. But as noted, they, and some others with an ax to grind against the company (or companies in general), tried to spin it that they were fired for the sort of situation you brought up. Oddly enough, due to that same quiet period (as well as a general reticence to talk to the press that the company got better with later), the company couldn't actually refute the spin publicly since to do so would've called attention to the problematical parts of the blog.