Duvall & Associates, Inc.
BUSINESS ADVISOR NEWSLETTER
 

 When workers goof off on the Web, its spells trouble for companies

- by Alan Duvall 

Published in Dayton Daily News  March 25, 2007 

My son’s a bat.  Fueled by Red Bull, he stays up all night surfing the net and playing computer games, then sleeps all day in recovery mode.

Long believed the sole domain of teenagers, businesses are now faced with the challenging new dilemma of handling abusive employee Internet usage.

Undoubtedly, the computer age has generated a recent explosion in worker productivity, perhaps its the single most critical factor in improved living standards.  

Nevertheless, too much of a good thing can prove to be bad.  For example, a Korean man recently died after engaging in a 50-hour online gaming marathon.  There are wide-spread reports of employees becoming addicted to web surfing and even an Internet game called Brickbreaker.  Some have come to nickname their BlackBerry personal data devices “CrackBerry” for its addictive qualities.

Legal scholars are debating whether businesses can be held responsible for Internet activities of employees.  For example, a Phoenix television station must now contend with possible legal action after a worker spliced 30 seconds of pornography into a regularly scheduled program.

Some studies estimate as much as half of all employee on-job Internet activity is personal in nature.  As a result, businesses are struggling with how to respond to productivity and legal issues.

A good program should begin with a company policy forbidding personal use of company computers in order to legally protect the company from a worker’s on-job mischief.

Physically monitoring computer usage introduces a new line of debate.  Wal-Mart and Hewlett-Packard offer two examples of companies that became over-zealous about investigating employee telephone and Internet usage.  Two probes have led to lawsuits against the companies.  IBM has been sued by a terminated employee claiming he was entitled to Americans with Disabilities Act protections (such as counseling) since he was addicted to the Internet.  Proof at least attorneys have profited from computers.

“As far as I’m concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza.”  Die Hard 2

Alan Duvall is a certified public accountant in Dayton.  Contact him at Alan@Duvallcpa.com.