IT & Policy :: Why Technological Solutions are not Always the Answer
As a manager for many companies’ networks and IT strategies as a whole, I am continuously confronted with problems in that the client is requesting a technological solution where an education and policy solution is far less expensive to implement and maintain.
One of the most frustrating; is that of employee web usage prohibition/enablement. All of the technology solutions to this problem that I have reviewed (I have implemented and reviewed many) end up costing the client far more in management man hours than the client would save by restricting the web browsing habits of misbehaving employees. Now from a consultants stand point this may be fine, because well they are billing more, but this is not the way I choose to operate.
Let us examine the root of the problem. Employees may be using work time to engage in activities online that are not work related. Isn’t this an HR problem? As such shouldn’t HR be responsible for maintaining and enforcing policies as they relate to web usage in the work place? The answer is yes they should be.
As an employer it is a fairly easy task to identify ineffective employees. Let’s face it, do you really want to have individuals working for you that you have to force to work by taking away a potentially abusable resource? I know I do not.
After this has been established the solution to the problem becomes a lot more simple. We simply need to enable HR to be able to review a specific employee’s online habits should the need arise.
So we setup a less invasive non prohibitive logging technology that could be in the form of a transparent proxy or an authenticating proxy that logs and creates reports relating to employee web usage habits. Now we have the records that HR can use to validate employee compliance to their established web usage policy should the need arise, or at performance review time. No expensive hardware or configuration is required, no expensive provider subscriptions are required and most importantly no management overhead is required to continuously maintain lists of sites that employees can and cannot access.
This is the best example I can think of that illustrates that good policy and a simple IT solution goes much farther then the latest and greatest in web usage management from any of the firms that are out there pimping their garbage.
(realize that I am referring to positions that require some amount of web access, it is very easy to remove web access completely from a specific group of employees, such as those involved in manual labor or data entry positions)