How to keep your employees from wasting time on MySpace

With the widespread popularity of MySpace.com more and more employers are trying to find ways to keep their employees from wasting valuable company time checking out the website. Many employees do not think its wrong to spend a few minutes on MySpace, but what some do not realize is that a few minutes can turn into hours rather quickly and before they know it the day is over.

As a business owner or manager you want your employees to be productive and not waste time and to you wasting time means doing something that is not work related. After all you are paying your employees to come to work on time everyday and to work for at least eight hours. As an employer what can you do to stop your employees from wasting company time on MySpace?

The good news is that you now have plenty of options to choose from. Depending on which option you choose, depends on the cost to implement it. Some programs are free, but if you decide to go with a highly technical option it could end up costing some money.

Option one:
Tell your employees that spending time on MySpace is not allowed and it could lead to their dismissal. Make sure this is also written in the company's policy and procedure manual so that it is in writing and the employee should have read it. Another good time to cover this is in company meetings or during the hiring process, this way the employee can not say later on that they did not know it was against company policy. This option is completely free, but it does not always work.

Option two:
Block access to the MySpace website. This would require the work of your IT department, or if you do not have an IT department or computer programmer you would have to pay a company to come out and block the MySpace website. While this option seems like a great idea and it sounds so simple, that is not necessarily true.

You can block access to MySpace, but then you run into the problem of MySpace proxies. MySpace proxies allow users to access websites that are restricted or blocked from the user's current location. Trying to block these proxies seems to be impossible, you can block the ones you know about but new ones are being created everyday. So in trying to block the websites that are creating the problem you are going to end up spending a ton of time and money just to keep up with the demand.

Option three:
You can set up a program that will randomly block access to different sites at different times, never blocking the same site twice in a row. In this respect you can probably fool your employees into thinking that all the sites used to access MySpace are blocked, but again this will not always work because of the new sites created daily. This option is not as time consuming or as expensive as option two, but in order to keep it updated you are going to have to spend time researching and updating on a regular basis.

Option four:
You can set up a program to track your employees' movements on the computer. This will allow you to know which employees are accessing which sites. You can even let your employees know that you track movements on every computer. Sometimes just knowing you are always being watched keeps a lot of employees from wasting time.

Option five:
Block off all internet access. This is probably the most drastic measure you would take. More and more companies are doing business online so their employees need access to the internet, so this would not be the best option. But in some companies internet access is not needed, in that case not allowing your employees access to the internet is a feasible option.

There are many ways to stop your employees from wasting time on MySpace, but as an employer you need to look at the pros and cons to every option before deciding what to do.

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Categories: Management,

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