Employers have power to restrict internet use

Mike Pitt, employment-law partner at Pearson Hinchliffe Commercial Law, Hollinwood

LEGALLY BOUND: HIT the panic button on the ishouldbeworking.com website and you are instantly transferred to a search engine with the words “productivity tools” in the search box.

Dedicated to long-lunchers and web-addicted employees, the website was the final straw for one of my clients.

She wanted to know if she was allowed by law to restrict the types of site her employees can access on her firm’s computers.

The short answer is yes. Employers are perfectly entitled to prevent employees from putting office equipment and internet connections to personal use — or to restrict the types of site they may visit during working hours.

Time-wasting, which was my client’s main concern, is not the only reason employers get twitchy about employees who twitter. There are more and more cases of rogue employees who post negative comments on the internet about their bosses or the company as a whole. There are even examples of disgruntled employees divulging business secrets on the net.

One solution to such problems is simply to ban outright non-business use of the internet. Employers taking this approach must be prepared to monitor employees’ e-mail and internet access in order to police the policy.

Under data-protection laws, employers must also alert their employees to the fact that monitoring is carried out and identify the reasons.

Whatever a company’s policy on internet use at work, this should spell it out clearly and applied consistently. If a firm pulls up one person and lets off another, it opens itself to the possibility of a discrimination claim.