The company I work for recently published a policy forbidding blogging while at work. From first glance this looks like a natural and normal thing – why should they provide resources to enable people to blog. Blog from home on your own time and with your own resources. At second glance this is a little scary for the paranoid blogger. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer and Internet policy in the workplace, Part 2: The Ideal Policy

The ideal policy must balance productivity. It has to focus on actual results of policy change, not a theoretical ideal. First, you need to identify what problem you have that you want to develop policy to solve. Policy for the sake of policy is worthless. Once the problem is identified, say your employees are spending too much time on webmail, then develop a policy to counteract it, working in small steps at first. Next, evaluate your small-step policy change. If it has accomplished what you set out to do, then do not proceed any further. If it has not, then take another small step. The goal is to rarely backtrack on policy. If you have to backtrack then people will lose respect for the policies you implement and further policies will need to be even more drastic in order to have any effect. Read the rest of this entry »

I have some first hand knowledge of several different ways of handling policy in the workplace. This article is the first in a series that will discuss those, some theoretical ideals, implementation and awareness techniques, and pitfalls to implementation. Policy usually seeks to maintain safety for proprietary company data, employee privacy, public relations/image reasons, and for employee efficiency reasons. Failure to create or implement policy effectively has all the opposite effects. Read the rest of this entry »