At what point does the internet start being different than a telephone line or some other communication system? In essence, it's the same thing - the difference is that it's a lot more convenient and easy to monitor your internet activity than your phone (not only if you're using it, but what are you doing, what are you saying, to who, etc).

I agree that productivity is affected and that some people abuse the use of internet but it's not reasonable to assume an employee can focus 100% of their time (not even 60%). I read a few articles a while back where it said most employees can do their work in 30% of their time without getting into trouble.

If they're not surfing the web, they'll be talking in the water cooler or doing something else.

I think that if managers realize this and come up with something that works for both parties (x% of your time doing something personal, etc) productivity will increase.

All in all, if the employees rather be reading what happened with Lindsay Lohan than doing work - the problem is not internet control, but something deeper. 

hey,Nicole!

I know that in Russia, the absense of the free Internet at work can be a serious reason to quit,especially if you don't have one at home.But our employers don't often  bother about watching, they just block all the IM options, blog web-sites  and social networking sites, so people are bored,have nothing else to do and start to work:))))

If you are on the company's "dime", the company's equipment and connection they have every right to monitor, filter, etc your access.

If you are on your time, your equipment, your line then you should have privacy.

If I post a racy calendar in my cube and someone finds it offensive and the company does nothing about the offndeds complaint it's an EEO complaint.

If I'm watching streaming vids that are offensive the company is also liable to an EEO complaint.

Work at work, play on your own time.

Dave 

If you work from home you'll only clog your own internet connection. As for loss of productivity, as long as I'm doing the job I'm supposed to do, my employer shouldn't have to care, right?

Interesting thought, to take consumerization one step further: why not provide open internet access across the workfloor and have employees VPN into secure server zones? Just as if they're working from home? Then your intranet connections use different pipes that are not influenced by public internet use. You also don't have a problem anymore with visitors connecting to cabled or wireless LANs, since those just get you on the public internet. 

But then again, I'm not an IT manager - never have been - and there are problably plenty of arguments against it... 

Hi Nicole,

The insects already are here and here.  Of course, these are just the ones we're allowed to know about.  The really advanced insects are busy destroying the specimens retrieved from Alien.  You thought Alien was fiction?!  But I'm afraid you don't have a need-to-know.

Corporate IT professionals really do need to monitor employees' online habits.

Avid voyeurism or even mere curiosity are not acceptable reasons to snoop into employees online activity, but gosh darn it, someone has to protect the internal network.

In my own company, some of our end users need to upload or download huge files on a daily basis. And if a couple dozen people are accessing streaming audio or video at the time, the work-related file exchanges can take a lot longer (due to reduced bandwidth) and that cuts into productivity. When we receive reports that "the internet is really slow," we check bandwidth usage on the network. If we find that some of our end users are watching too much streaming video, for example, then we'll discuss it with their Department Managers, who will, in turn, ask their employees to keep personal internet access to a minimum.

For protection against malware, certain sites are simply blocked. In this case, it's software that's monitoring employees' internet access.

The bosses themselves do not monitor their crews' online activity; that would be absurd. After all, don't they have better things to do with their precious (and highly-paid) time?

It's not just Insect Overlords. Airport Security can also now pore through your emails and mobile phones.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/05/05/exclusive-tougher-security-checks-to-enter-us-as-laptops-and-mobile-phones-searched-89520-20405885/

That should speed things up.