Now they have blocked BT3Central in my office!!@#@!

[radhak]

Corporate America seems to increasingly distrust employees.

My organization had long blocked social networks (FB, Twitter, YouTube, yahoogroups, etc). Last year they stopped access to all personal emails (Gmail, Hotmail, etc).

While the former was not a problem for me, emails were - I could only look at mine at home in the evenings or early mornings. And after a long day at the screen at work, I was not inclined to go to another machine at home, so I have ended up being a weekend emailer. The social fallout of that has been that more and more in my circle are convinced I am (or becoming) unsocial. (Not that I'm in a hurry to dispel that )

Now the killer blow : suddenly I find that BT3C is blocked ! Dunno why?!? Did they find the traffic here so high? That must only mean me ! It has always been a stress buster for me to sneak in here!

Since there is no 'appeal' over this, I have to live with it. Do we have something like an 'RSS Feed' here? Long shot, but still...

With the emails, I do have a small way out : on MyYahoo, I am able to create multiple email contents, provide credentials to each email login, and see when I get new emails in a list (still can't go and read any); at least I know if I have any urgent emails. I could not find something like that for BT3C.

Maybe this will be the final straw and I could wean myself away from this addictive place !

[Russianwolf]

go get a smart phone, they can't block what you do on that.

[Black wallnut]

go get a smart phone, they can't block what you do on that.

^^ this is the answer

[LinuxRandal]

Even then, doing personal errands on company time, could get you in trouble.

[sweensdv]

I don't blame your company one bit. You're paid to work not surf the net. Even if someone only spends 15 minutes a day surfing on company time, if you multiply that by the number of employees and it doesn't take long before you're talking about a lot of non-productive time and undeserved salary being paid. Sorry, no sympathy here.

[cwsmith]

While you're probably not an abusive time-consumer of the company's bandwidth, it still has to be realized that the the company computer and both it's WAN and LAN resources are there strickly for doing the company's business.

I was very fortunated to get into "computers" at very early, and initiated much of the personal computer transition in my company, long before I retired. Almost from day one, we had problems with employee's, even though we highly restricted exactly who had internet access and who didn't. (Initially it was only about twenty key personnel out of a workforce of 1600.)

But even then, you'd get certain executives, who'd log in first thing in the morning and continue their day with feeds on the stock market, etc. In the first month we had one engineer who downloaded over a thousand pages of porn. Several logged into "games" which they appeared to be spending much of their day at and E-mail seemed to have almost as much activity as it did just on the local network.

Bottom line was our "restrictions" and review process of those "in need" was a joke. But even without web access, the abuse of time spent playing games or sending junk between local area network computers was ridiculously high.

You can't cut all of that out, but the company took great measure to educate the employees to let them know that absolutely nothing was private on the company computer.... where every keystroke and monitor view can be legally monitored and if necessary, used to the detriment of employment.

Frankly, I don't think this kind of thing is totally fair and such close monitoring is really poor for morale; but, the technology is there and it can be abused from both sides. It's hard to know where to draw the line and I think that is why many companies simply block almost everything.

CWS

[RAFlorida]

I am with the low percentage

that the company has the right to ban various computer usage. The employee was hired to do a job and that's what that person should do. No email, no games, no porn,... Do your job and be thankfull that you do have a job. There's thousands without a job and would be happy to set in your place. (I am not picking out any one person here, just a reference.) Man hours lost due to misuse is in the mega hours per week, nationally. That goes for the so-called "...smart phone..." as well. That's man hours of nonproductivity down the drain.

[radhak]

I don't have a smart phone - have always found it takes away from my productive time...



I have no argument against a company's right to block websites, or that it is productive to do so. I cringe to think the 'what if' of allowing Facebook or twitter or youtube. And I allow that I would have more time to spend on 'official' stuff if my internet was completely cut off.

So, in essence, I am not saying I demand anything; I'll go with the flow.

But, I do want to argue (in general, not just for me), that insisting employees spend each minute in office for work, and nothing else, is also counterproductive. I have worked in a company called Bowne Publishing, a company older than the US (yes, established before 1776) in NYC. Not sure if that was their culture, but my supervisor had a clock he held us to, arriving at work, going for lunch, leaving for the day, and if we were on the phone. Once he told me I spent too much time in the rest rooms (truth, no hyperbole) ! I was a computer programmer there, and the overall productivity there was abysmal compared to all the other places I worked.

That might be an extreme, but it states my case : 15 minutes (even 45 minutes spread across) a day per person might multiply to a lot of manyears for a large company, but the return is real, even if non-tangible : employees don't feel threatened, insecure or even pushed. And mostly, deliverables are pre-assigned and measurable, so each employee (and supervisor) knows what is expected out of them, and where they might be slacking off. I'd say any corporation will willingly make the trade and opt for happy workforce delivering 95%.

Sorry to hijack my own thread - I only wanted to find out if we had an RSS feed here.

[jnesmith]

I don't blame your company one bit. You're paid to work not surf the net. Even if someone only spends 15 minutes a day surfing on company time, if you multiply that by the number of employees and it doesn't take long before you're talking about a lot of non-productive time and undeserved salary being paid. Sorry, no sympathy here.

Many corporations give employees several breaks throughout the day. Doing personal things on those breaks is generally not prohibited. It's a break, after all.

Now, using the Company's hardware and bandwidth for personal purposes is another story.

[Russianwolf]

Putting my HR hat on, trying to get a work force to work 95-100% of the day is impossible, and detrimental for moral. A person working at 100% is going to be less productive overall than one working at 85%. Its counter-intuitive, but has been researched extensively. I have to encourage my staff to take breaks, to not eat lunch at their desk all the time, and to get out of the office at reasonable hours.

I've worked places with workloads that you wouldn't believe, the turn-over at places like that is less than 24 months. That mean every 24 months you have to train a new person to do the job. That in and of itself is detrimental to performance as the trainer could be better used elsewhere and is usually a supervisor with a higher value too boot.

I fortunate that I work in an office now where we do a lot of research and we can block basically nothing as we never know where that research will lead. Granted, if I find out someone is downloading porn I'll be having a chat with them, but facebook, Link-in, and twitter are actually parts of our business model, and are for the executives we work with also.

[cwsmith]

The company that I spent my "30 years" at, wasn't a bad company. I actually loved my job and most of the people that I worked with. But, I must admit that a couple of the managers were ridiculously bearucratic, to the point where I often wondered about their sanity.

I had a boss come into my office, raving about my phone use after only working for him just over a month. "You're #$%&@*^ not being paid to talk on the phone!!!! I was quite taken aback by this verbally abusive attack and asked what the h3!! he was talking about.

"You spent 55 minutes (this is NOT an exageration) on the phone!. My response was that I don't DO long phone calls, even on my home phone, so what are you talking about"

Seems that the 55 minutes was my entire month's "phone time".

The problem was instantly resolved, I unplugged my phone from the wall and handed it to him. From now on I'll have everyone call you with the questions. After lunch, his manager brought my phone back and I was never bothered about it again.

Regarding the computer usage, much of the problem with web access used to be simply a matter of "bandwidth" as our system could be easily overloaded during those early days. But still, one has to realize that company equipment shouldn't be used for personal entertainment.

CWS

[Shep]

I work at a call center and we have reduced access to many sights. As I type this I am currently on hold with my account. (Have been on hold for about 8 minutes.) While I'm on hold I get as much other stuff done, ie multask. Currently I've done as much work as I can do without talking to another person. I've got all my work screens open with the next task I have to complete by making a phone call. So, I can't do anything work currently.

I feel that surfing the net is ok when opportunities like this present themselves. It sure beats staring at my cubicle wall. Makes the time go by faster too, which helps to improve my "employee morale."

[vaking]

So far this thread has been all about productivity but there may be other considerations.
1). Liability.
Imagine an employee uses company network to download child pornography. Child pornography is illegal so if company does not monitor and block Internet usage - it is tempting to do it from work since it is harder to track for law enforcement. If this happens - company will likely be liable. In order to avoid any chances of liability most companies will go beyond the "illegal" content. They will block anything that has to do with sex, violence, offensive speach or video, etc.
2). Numerous government and other regulations.
You work for financial company which has an investment bank division. Your company has to comply with regulations established by SEC. One such regulation demands that all communications from company to its investment clients must be logged/recorded as it may possibly contain insider trading information or just improper trading advice. In reality - practically anybody on the Internet may be your investment client. So all outgoing communications from your company must be recorded.
In practical world in means the following:
Your corporate e-mail system will be configured to log everything going out of the company. Instant messaging too if it allows you to talk to external people. Certain industry-specific communication systems (Reuters Chat, Bloomberg e-mail) are certified to comply with SEC regulations by vendors who stand behind them. Anything else the company must consider "unauthorized" and must make reasonable effort to block its employees from using. This means that every Internet site that offers people ability to chat, tweet, send e-mail, make posts, send private messages is considered "Internet communications" and must be blocked. Bt3Central allows postong and private messages - it is in the category that should be blocked by this regulation. Maintaining list of all Internet sites that need to be blocked is very labor intensive. Companies don't do it themselves - they use vendor products for it. Vendors like Bluecoat or Websense are happy to sell subscription to their services and your company will have a proxy server configured to block everything that vendor puts in the category to block. Your company most likely did not block BT3Central intentionally, vendor your company uses figured out that this site has ability to post or send PM.
I used SEC regulation as an example, there are many regulated industries that have to do something similar. All financial, all medical, pharmaceutical, etc. If the company in such industry does not make reasonable effort - audit will consider this company in violation of existing rules.

[Russianwolf]

So far this thread has been all about productivity but there may be other considerations.
1). Liability.
Imagine an employee uses company network to download child pornography. Child pornography is illegal so if company does not monitor and block Internet usage - it is tempting to do it from work since it is harder to track for law enforcement. If this happens - company will likely be liable. In order to avoid any chances of liability most companies will go beyond the "illegal" content. They will block anything that has to do with sex, violence, offensive speach or video, etc.
2). Numerous government and other regulations.
You work for financial company which has an investment bank division. Your company has to comply with regulations established by SEC. One such regulation demands that all communications from company to its investment clients must be logged/recorded as it may possibly contain insider trading information or just improper trading advice. In reality - practically anybody on the Internet may be your investment client. So all outgoing communications from your company must be recorded.
In practical world in means the following:
Your corporate e-mail system will be configured to log everything going out of the company. Instant messaging too if it allows you to talk to external people. Certain industry-specific communication systems (Reuters Chat, Bloomberg e-mail) are certified to comply with SEC regulations by vendors who stand behind them. Anything else the company must consider "unauthorized" and must make reasonable effort to block its employees from using. This means that every Internet site that offers people ability to chat, tweet, send e-mail, make posts, send private messages is considered "Internet communications" and must be blocked. Bt3Central allows postong and private messages - it is in the category that should be blocked by this regulation. Maintaining list of all Internet sites that need to be blocked is very labor intensive. Companies don't do it themselves - they use vendor products for it. Vendors like Bluecoat or Websense are happy to sell subscription to their services and your company will have a proxy server configured to block everything that vendor puts in the category to block. Your company most likely did not block BT3Central intentionally, vendor your company uses figured out that this site has ability to post or send PM.
I used SEC regulation as an example, there are many regulated industries that have to do something similar. All financial, all medical, pharmaceutical, etc. If the company in such industry does not make reasonable effort - audit will consider this company in violation of existing rules.

Considering that most if not all companies have some sort of LAN now-a-days, you have to log in to have access, so if someone is doing something it can easily be tracked to the computer and person.

As far as communications is concerned, With most people carrying blackberrys and other smart phones these days (with brokers and the like having used them for years already), I don't see how a company can attempt to effectively regulate communications when people have personal devices (mine for example isn't owned by the company) that can be carried in a pocket.

[vaking]

Considering that most if not all companies have some sort of LAN now-a-days, you have to log in to have access, so if someone is doing something it can easily be tracked to the computer and person.

As far as communications is concerned, With most people carrying blackberrys and other smart phones these days (with brokers and the like having used them for years already), I don't see how a company can attempt to effectively regulate communications when people have personal devices (mine for example isn't owned by the company) that can be carried in a pocket.

In my company almost everybody carries a phone or blackberry issued by the company. Those phones do have Internet access but it is filtered following same rules as Internet access via LAN. People are allowed to carry personal cell phones in addition but not many want to carry 2 phones. Majority of people have only one phone and it is a company phone. I do expect that in the future auditors/regulators will expand definitions and will require that within certain areas (say trading floors) private phones must not work, so I do believe that you can only count on private phone giving you unrestricted access as a short term solution if you work in a regulated industry.

As for authentication to access Internet and keeping logs - almost every company has Lan but not every proxy requires authentication. Further more you need to configure proxy to collect and keep log of all Internet access. This can be quite intimidating. In a large company this log can be measured in Gigabytes per day. It usually requires dedicated servers, etc. In most places this is done only if there is a regulatory need for it. It is easier to simply block Internet content that you want blocked.