Bosses likely to punish e-mail and Internet abuse

There is a growing trend among UK employers to take action against e-mail and Internet abuse by their employees, according to research published yesterday by the IRS Employment Review. However, the research report states that employers may not be concentrating on the right issues.

The review, conducted in July, questioned 63 private and public sector employers, with a total workforce of 97,275. Of those employers willing to reveal policy information, 45% had taken formal action against employees over e-mail and Internet abuse in the past twelve months.

96% of the respondents cited sending obscene e-mails as a forbidden activity, with 90% stating that accessing pornography on the internet was also forbidden. Other forbidden activities included: e-mails that denigrate colleagues (63%), Internet gambling (63%), using web-based e-mail (45%), internet shopping (31%) and sending non-work related e-mails (14%).

Despite this, e-mail and internet access is increasingly widespread within the workplace - the survey found that 66% of employers offer e-mail access to all employees, 24% limit access to office-based employees, and just 2% limited access to managers.

As a result, warned the IRS Employment Review, employers need to ensure policies are in place to manage risk to their reputations and productivity and to protect themselves against the possible legal consequences of misuse of e-mail and internet access - such as a case in August of this year where an employee took her bosses, a firm of financial advisers, to an industrial tribunal over e-mail harassment by colleagues and won &pound10,000 in compensation.

According to the IRS Employment Review, most organisations surveyed did have formal policies setting the boundaries of acceptable use, but compliance with other aspects of good practice - including encouraging a more formal attitude towards the use of e-mail and the labelling of non-work related emails - was less rigorous. Furthermore, employers needed to focus more on measures such as effective web filtering software in order to minimise the risk of problems occurring.

Acknowledgement - this article was originally published in www.out-law.com which provides IT and e-commercial legal advice and support. www.out-law.com is published by the international law firm Masons.