SMEs strict on employee internet use
Mar 23 2011
Nearly three quarters of UK workplaces restrict their employees’ access to the internet
Nearly three quarters of UK workplaces restrict their employees’ access to the internet, research finds.
According to a recent survey of 260 managers by office design company Maris Interiors, 71 per cent of offices have a filter for pornographic websites, with more than half (52 per cent) of employees unable to access social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook and 48 per cent of employees kept out of their personal email.
YouTube is blocked by 30 per cent of employers, and news websites by 27 per cent, while 9 per cent only allow access to certain specific sites.
The most draconian approach is taken by the 4 per cent of employers who only allow staff to use the company’s intranet, not even permitting access to search engines such as Google.
Chairman of Maris Interiors Michael Howard says, ‘It’s a difficult decision about blocking websites in the workplace – by doing so you have to balance employees’ productivity against their morale. At our company we restrict access to pornographic sites – hopefully this doesn’t affect their morale too much!’
Comment by Barbara Patrick
Wednesday 23rd March 2011I recently drafted a staff policy regarding internet usage (for a small company) so it's interesting to see these statistics.
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