Q: In the office, the internet is vital for my business to function. I want my employees to know that I trust them, but also feel that the internet can become an easy distraction. Why is it important to have an internet policy in place?
A: Employment tribunals place a significant amount of weight on the fact that employees know what standards are expected of them in the workplace. A good way to do this is to have a written policy on expected standards in relation to internet usage. It may sound a little heavy handed to create an official document in this regard, but this is exactly what you need to do to formalise your rules.
Obviously, your policy must be reasonable and not too restrictive. What your policy can do is place limits on the amount of time any employee can spend on the internet for their own use while on your premises, or set specific times when they can use it. For example, personal browsing might be allowed only before and after working hours or at lunch time. You can even ban non-work usage altogether, and support this by disconnecting any access whatsoever to certain sites if you feel you need to be this severe.
A formal policy should set out the rights, responsibilities and limitations on the use of your company’s equipment and will help you prevent any unauthorised or careless use that might result in it creating a legal risk.
If you choose to allow your staff access to the internet, albeit only at certain times, you need to create rules on the types of sites you permit them to visit. Your policy should specifically prohibit deliberate access of any site that could be seen to be offensive, obscene or indecent, such as pornography, racist or sexist material, violent images, or incitement to criminal behaviour, so as to avoid any claim of harassment.
A policy is not effective unless you back it up with the appropriate level of action against breaches. Your policy should set out the instances that will bring about disciplinary action and you should ensure this action is taken when breaches are discovered. Your staff will not respect a policy if they see that there are no ramifications when they do not follow it.
Peter Done is managing director of law firm Peninsula
