Web at work: Not YourSpace: Productivity, security among reasons employers ramp up monitoring

You probably know that lots of companies monitor the Web sites employees visit while they're at work. But did you know that more companies are moving to track the minutes spent and keystrokes made by employees while they're on the Web?

It’s March Madness, and a good chunk of the Web browsers on office computers are set to CBS Sports, where the NCAA playoffs are being streamed live.

Maybe your boss is letting you watch some of the games for a few minutes of the day. Or, maybe your company has decided to block the site from you.

Maybe, as global outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas suggest, the “annual distraction could cost employers as much as $1.7 billion in wasted work time over the 16 business days of the tournament,” some of it coming from watching the games on work computers.

But it’s not just Web entertainment at work during March and early April that’s a problem. It’s the other 10 months of the year, as well.

Lots of companies monitor the Web sites their employees visit while they’re using work computers; most workers realize that.

More companies, however, are moving to track the minutes spent and keystrokes made by employees while they’re on the Web.

In 2001, when the American Management Association and ePolicy Institute did a first survey on workplace electronic monitoring, 19 percent of employers “told us they were monitoring time logged on and keystrokes,” said Nancy Flynn, ePolicy Institute executive director.

In 2005, it was 36 percent. In the 2007 survey, released last month, “that number had grown to 45 percent,” she said.

Some of the increase may have to do with the economy, and a demand for increased productivity by companies that now have fewer employees to handle the same or larger workload.

The past few years also brought a surge in the popularity of bandwidth-heavy sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

The sites, with their large video and audio files, not only strain companies’ computer networks, they involve more than a quick mouse click or momentary distraction from work.

Security and legal liability are also huge issues.

“The organizations that are concerned about the amount of employee time spent (on the Web) and actual content of keystrokes, their concerns revolve around not only productivity, but security,” said Flynn.


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Source: MSNBC
By: Suzanne Choney