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Technology has become crucial to today’s workplace. Since you can’t slow down to snail-mail after you’ve been souped up to warp speed, many employers are now facing a new problem: How do you limit the use of the Web and its various modes of communications to those beneficial to company productivity?

Giving employees free rein to run amuck online can result in abuse and even legal penalties, but punishing misuse of the Web can end in a lawsuit. With the laws on electronic communication still murky there is no failsafe strategy to protect your company, but attorney Joseph Beachboard, of Ogletree Deakins, said in his speech “Lost in Myspace” at the recent Society of Human Resource Management conference that he believes monitoring employees’ use of the Web, with consent, is the safest bet.
Checking out what employees are clicking on without their knowledge can be considered an invasion of privacy, meaning any resulting dismissals may be challenged in court. Because of this, Beachboard said, every company should have an electronic communications policy.

“Ignoring the problem is not going to make it go away,” he informed the room full of professionals who attended his speech in hopes of learning more on how to protect their companies from liability.

According to Beachboard, it is better to create this policy as a separate document that new hires are required to sign than it is to simply include it in the company’s handbook. By doing this, employees’ expectations of privacy are decreased, which alone can deter many from misusing the Internet while on the clock.

Beachboard suggests creating a limited personal use policy due to the fact that it is easier to enforce. By structuring the guidelines this way, employers give themselves the ability to punish workers who allow surfing the web to get in the way of their productivity, but free them up from having to penalize every person who glances at a site that is unrelated to business, which could become overwhelming.

Since consistency is the key to avoiding being accused of favoritism or discrimination, employees should understand the consequences of misusing the company’s Internet. The punishment for being caught surfing eBay or wasting countless hours lurking on MySpace should be explicitly stated in the document presented to each new hire. The penalty could be anything from a write-up to termination, depending both on the company’s stance on the Internet and the severity of the situation at hand.

Another important thing Beachboard said should be included in a company’s electronic communication policy is the forbiddance of derogatory, discriminative, or obscene statements. By adding this into the guidelines, he said, employers also protect other workers from being the victims of uncomfortable e-mails and IMs.

In addition to discussing how to set up an effective policy to limit personal Internet use in the office place, Beachboard also talked about the importance of having clear cut rules about cell phones and blogs included in an employer’s appropriate work behavior guidelines.