Businesses today have to deal with the sensitive issue of ensuring their employees are not too distracted by personal emails or entertainment websites (e.g. social networking, gambling and games websites) while at work. The best approach to ensuring that productivity and efficiency is not affected, while keeping employees happy, is to communicate and then enforce an Acceptable use Policy.
You can find tips on what to consider in creating an AUP on the Acceptable Use Policy page.
Today most companies require staff to agree to and sign an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). This is a legal document that lays out standards for how employees are expected to use computer resources like their PC, email and the Internet. Acceptable Use Policies typically explain safe computing practices and security procedures. They also address personal Internet use and set standards for acceptable behavior. The key drivers behind Acceptable Use Policies are protecting the company against legal liability and trying to restore productivity and efficiency to the use of IT resources.
Trying to implement an AUP without any means of enforcing it is like trying to pass laws without a police force. There will always be a small minority of employees that will create problems if there is no means of enforcement.
There are many technology options available for enforcing Acceptable Use Policies and these should be augmented with communication, education and follow-up from management.
Marshal solutions are able to enforce, monitor and report on email and Internet Acceptable Use Policies, preventing most breaches of policies from occurring.
There are many common policies that corporations implement with Marshal solutions to improve productivity and efficiency. These policies typically include:
Estimate Your ROI To gain an idea of what your Return on Investment with Marshal solutions would be, please use our Productivity Return on Investment Calculator.
Marshal's reporting functionality allows businesses to better understand how their IT environment is utilized. Typically, running MailMarshal or WebMarshal for between one week and one month in ‘logging only’ mode provides sufficient data to define how employees utilize the Web and where potential problems arise. At this point, companies usually consult with staff before implementing policies, to ensure that rules will not adversely affect job requirements (for instance, software engineers require access to executable file downloads). Typically, companies discover that bandwidth usage is cut in half, average email size is reduced by 50%, and users spend significantly less time on the Internet.
Most Marshal customers find that, on productivity and bandwidth savings alone, Marshal solutions pay for themselves within 12 months – and this does not include savings made on virus protection, spam blocking or avoidance of legal liability.
