The Importance of Internet Policy in Telstra Company - Research Paper Example

Internet Policy and HRM Internet Policies, Legal context and Human Resource Management TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………….. 3 Framing of the research……………………………………….. ….. 3 List of Objectives…………………………………………………. 4 INTERNET POLICIES, LEGAL CONTEXT AND HRM………………. 4 Internet Policy …………………………………………………….. 4 Social Media ………………………………………………………. 5 Relation to HRM………………………………………………….. 6 Internet usage within workplace…………………………………… 6 E-mail and HR aspects……………………………………………. 7 Internet policy for achieving business goal ………………………. 8 Costs and benefits of social media ……………………………….. 9 A positive approach ………………………………………………. 10 Legal issues in private internet usage ……………………………. 10 EVIDENCES AND FACTORS AFFECTING INTERNET POLICY….. 11 Telstra’s case……………………………………………………… 11 Factors to be considered for Internet Policy………………………. 13 RECOMMENDATIONS…………………………………………………. 14 From Policy to Success …………………………………………… 14 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………… 15 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………… 17 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………… 18 INTRODUCTION The internet has made tremendous changes on the way the business is carried out. As in almost all fields, internet always gives way to both positive and negative impacts. In Human Resource Management, despite the fact that internet has become a successful pathway for employers in order to find wide potential employees for targeting and recruiting processes and to facilitate learning and development for employees, it raises issues of employees’ internet misuse and vague impressions of professional lives. Internet misuse among employees and the relevance of internet policies within the corporate culture have recently become matters of debate among human resource experts and managements. Many companies around the world, may be with rigid policies or not, have abandoned use of social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc among their employees or have restricted using social media within workplace timings so as to make employees more professionally accountable and save them from ‘just a time consume’ deal. Telstra staffs are recently given rules on internet use and it becomes as an illuminating example of how important is internet policy within a corporate atmosphere. Framing of the research This piece of research work attempts to find out the relevance of implementing internet policy within an organization and its legal context from human resource perspectives. This work analyses how and why business organizations need to concern the internet usages of employees and especially with regard to social media influences on employees. It discusses the concept of private internet usage and privacy within a workplace. This work finds out the general and specifically negative impacts of social media on business organization and employees with evidences from corporate examples regarding employees’ internet misuse and need of internet policy. Apart from pointing the relevance and need of effective internet policies, this work discusses what measures can be taken by human resource management so as to determine whether the business is successfully achieving its policy objects. List of Objectives This research aims:- To outline the general and specifically negative impacts of internet use on employees and organization. To discuss the relevance of internet policy and legal context within a workplace. To analyze why an organization should concern the internet use, mainly social media use, among its employees. INTERNET POLICIES, LEGAL CONTEXT AND HRM Internet Policy Internet Policy (internet Usage Policy) refers to guidelines and instructions given to employees regarding use of internet facilities including web surfing, e-mails, social media and chatting etc in order to increase employee productivity and to reduce legal liabilities. Noonan (2004) states that an internet policy should be able to define who is allowed to access the internet and what types of access are permitted (p.34). Employers need to concern employees’ access to internet and determine what types of sites, social media webs and chatting can be used by their employees. The increased accessibility and growing popularity of internet use like facebook, twitter and so on create greater challenges on human resource management. “More than 200 workers in Australia have been dismissed and a further 900 have been suspended as a result of internet misuse since 1998” (Cieri, 2008, chapter 2, Human Resource Management in Australia, p- 68-69). This shows how importance is internet policy especially in the present working atmosphere where workers very often get online and indulge with ‘time killing’ sites. Social Media Social media like facebook, linkedin and twitter are the means for public to publish privately created contents and to attain real time comments or opinions through online discussions. Social media sites have obtained highest ranks in Google and Alexa rankings because the number of people accessing these sites and publishing private or public contents increase rapidly day by day. A great majority of this comes from employees of different large companies and they comment on company matters. It has become a matter of concern for human resource management. According to Solis and Breakenridge (2009), public relations are so quickly changing and the social web is empowering a new class of authoritative voices that we can never ignore. Social media alter the entire media landscape by placing the power of influence in the hands of regular people with expertise, opinions and the comment sharing passions (p. 1). User-generated contents like comments and feedbacks are turning over traditional way of public relations that in turn become many communicators and professionals confused. ‘Anyone can comment anything at any time and from anywhere’ is fairly good in the view point of freedom of expression and opinion, but, this freedom of commenting is quite often misused is the concern of human resource management. Relation to HRM Illegal employee behavior and inappropriate conduct can create a number of difficulties to the employer. It may decrease in the overall productivity of the business may be by damaging business reputation, or resulting in injuries to employees and customers and also causing costly legal damages (Smith and Mazin, 2004, p.169). Human resource management needs to concern employees’ access to web surfing and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and to implement effective ‘internet policy’ in order to increase employee productivity. It can be increased by saving time and avoiding any possible internet misuse that may adversely affect business image among the public. Employee recruiting, selection, training and educating are some basic parts of strategic human resources management. Many organizations give high priority to employee learning and development through a number of strategic approaches (Cieri, 2008, chapter 2, Human Resource Management in Australia, p- 68-69). The internet usually provides employees with quick access to a countless of crucial information and knowledge. E-mail is an effective communication tool for employees that always let them transmit useful information of both corporate and personal benefit. Mostly, HR management depend on web sites and social media for most its strategic practices. Recruiting and selection are, nowadays, done with helps of internet and employee learning and overall development are made easier with social media sites. Internet is being used to mechanize many of the employment related tasks of HR including recruitment, selection and development. Because of that the internet plays vital role in employee learning and development, the use of internet within workplace cannot be fully abandoned and instead, the internet policy should be able to restrict employees from misusing internet facilities. Internet usage within workplace Does Human Resource management need to concern the internet use of employees while they are in the workplace? Most organizations have already found the answer from their employees’ productivity being decreased. Telstra is an informative example for implementing first and well defined internet policy in order to restrict its employees from accessing social media and commenting on company matters. Telstra employees will need to get authorization from their nearest boss and public policy staff and also need to be trained from social media training program to post comments about company matters on sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter etc (Winterford, 2009). A social networking story from the town of Clacton-on-sea in Essex reveals another issue of 16 years old employee, called Kimberley Swann, being terminated from his employment due to internet misuse. She was terminated because she posted a comment on her facebook profile saying the job is boring (Glazer A, April 2009). This incident has proved that employee comments on social media networking will create concerns for organization and it may result in employee’s suspension or termination. E-mail and HR aspects Another growing concern of Human Resource management is inappropriate use of organizational e-mail resources. Increasing use of email for non-job related purposes create challenges for organizations. Employees may use company resources for personal use like personal shopping, personal messaging and the like. Personal emails received by an employee while he is at workplace may consume employee’s time, company resources and risk of virus transmission (Baker and McKenzie, 2008, p. 1118). Emails present potentially harm on employees’ time wastage and it may result in conflicts and thus reduce work productivity too. According to Smith and Mazin (2004), inappropriate employee e-mail, computer and internet usage is really a serious problem for human resource management. Misuse of these electronic tools will create hosting of legal problems for the organization. E-mail transmission is regarded to be documents and it can be later used against an employer in a lawsuit and also as a written letter or memorandum (p. 171). Quite recently, in many court cases, employee emails and other types of messages or comments were considered to be evidence in claims of employee discrimination, sexual or other types of harassment etc. Armstrong (2006) emphasizes that employees’ misuse of internet by sending pornographic emails to friends and others is becoming increasingly a challenge to Human resource management. Employers are highly concerned about time waste as well as undesirability of pornographic or defamatory material that are being distributed round the office (p.874). Internet policy for achieving business goal The business goal can be said to be achieved when there is maximum utilization of available resources in order to increase productivity. Employee is one among the resources of any business and hence the fuller use of an employee is worthwhile. A very important goal of the business is to protect company from liabilities that may arise including liabilities due to employees’ internet misuse. A well prepared internet policy helps human resource management dismiss or terminate an employee while he breaches company’s policies and thus creates liability or bad image to the company. For instance, Telstra’s internet policy makes it clear that any costs incurred as a result of breach of policy by any employee, it must be recovered from him. The internet policy must be able to help an organization develop its employees from internet resources and at the same time to restrict its employees from any sort of internet misuse. Telstra provides a blog as an opportunity for employees for two way conversation. People can freely put their comments and feedback without fear. (Winterford, 2009. Costs and benefits of social media Online networking tools, in particular, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have produced a range of confusing issues because, these social media sites have completely distorted the boundaries of our private, public and professional lives (Williams, 2009). According to a social networking survey, 62 % of workers were found having direct access to internet from their workplace. Out of this; 14 % of workers get access in to social networking sites 20 % said their employers have already blocked social networking sites, and 76 % workers seem to have benefited from getting access to social networking sites. (HR Magazine, July 2009) This survey shows that there are significant numbers of employees who get free access to internet and in particular social media sites. There would be a good number of employees who find internet resources and material for further learning and professional development. It benefits the organization to generate better outcome. Same time, there are significant number of employees who waste times on useless sites, comment about their employer and organization in social media sites, use viruses or malicious software to hack company data base and get in to pornographic sites. This remains to be a cost of social media to the organization. The concern for Human Resource Management is that employee learning and development must be encouraged and their internet misuse must be restricted by internet policy. A positive approach Employees’ internet use, may be more than its harm, has positive impacts on both employee and employer. Being vital for employee learning and development, internet use can neither be fully restricted nor fully allowed is the foundation and fundamental view point behind implementing an internet policy. Internet always benefits both employer and employee for further personal and professional development. Human Resource magazine (29 May 2008) reported that British businesses were losing £4 billion per year in lost productivity as a result of banning personal internet use within workplace. The reports proves, based on survey analysis, workers give priority to e-break than usual tea break. A 10 minute e-break can have more benefits, but many bosses are banning them fully from accessing internet and lose productivity (humanresourcemagazine.com) A good example is Telstar’s internet policy which does not fully restrict employees from accessing social media, instead, they are allowed to access social media with due permission from nearest boss. Social media is of great help to the employees to get in touch with various companies and employment systems of other business organizations. If employees are able to grasp and achieve the best out of social media from corporate and occupational experiences that are posted by friends in social media, from success tips for both personal and professional development and without any sort of misuse and time wastage, this would really help them to become more productive. The positive impacts of internet and in particular social media can never be negligible. Legal issues in private internet usage Internet and email use will increase employer exposure to discrimination and sexual harassment claims. Social media sites, chat within such sites, emails, images, video and audio clips uploaded and many other forms of file or message transferring are potentially harm to be discriminatory. There were a number of employees found terminated or suspended from their employment due to distributing discriminating material and messages (Baker and McKenzie, 2008, p. 1114). Discriminatory conduct may be direct or indirect. Direct discrimination refers to the treatment of a person less favorably, less respectfully or with less regards than another person in same condition. If an employer dismisses an employee just because of his gender or religion, it is direct discrimination. Indirect discrimination refers to a practice that becomes inoffensive but it may result in a group to be disadvantaged (Stone, 2008). Offensive emails sent within an organization, messages posted or images, video or sound clips uploaded to sites have the potential to be either direct or indirect discriminatory. EVIDENCES AND FACTORS AFFECTING INTERNET POLICY Telstra’s case Telstra, the Carrier and Media Company with around 49000 employees, has become the first Australian organization to bring a set of rules and regulations for employees regarding internet use. Telstra’s public policy and communication group managing director David Quilty has already been considering the issue and finally, in last April, the internet policy rules came in to effect (Williams, July 2009). Telstra’s employees must get permission from both their concerned immediate manager and Public Policy staff and also they must have participated in social media training program. This is the most interesting part of the policy. The strategic human resource approach Telstra has taken in to account is to avoid any potential internet misuse and abuse as well as to facilitate employees to utilize internet resources. Basically, Telstra’s internet policy was designed to make employees responsible and accountable too. The social media training program aims at updating employees’ knowledge on emerging social changes and educating legal and favorable practice on social media sites (Winterford, 2009). Howard (2006) suggests that all employers must take internet policy in order to avoid excessive internet use and to avoid accessing pornographic or unsuitable sites. By doing so, employers will be in very strong position to take action against any employee who is caught misusing internet (p. 139). Telstra’s strategic approach towards internet policy will help Human Resource department take actions against social media or email misuse, pornographic sites access and any other internet misuse that may increase the liabilities of the company. According to Telstra internet policy, an employee can be terminated or suspended or even given written or verbal warning when he breaches the policy rules. The internet policy excludes personal use of social media for discussing other issues that are not related to the company. In almost all organizations, one of the main challenges the human resource management faces is from bad-mouthed or loose-tongued employees who find wrongs in everything possible and spread it to colleagues. Social media has recently become a platform for these employees to comment against their own organization. Telstra employee Leslie Nasser was terminated for posting messages on Twitter abusing Federal Communication Minister. Factors to be considered for Internet Policy The human resource department needs to take in to account a number of factors while forming and implementing an internet policy for the organization. Basically, the internet policy must be able to protect the company from any liability that may arise due to employee’s internet misuse. The ‘internet access’ should be neither fully banned nor fully allowed for free access, because, it is much more worthwhile if employees are able to utilize for professional development and, same time, the potential liabilities, danger of time wastage and possibility to lose productivity can happen if internet is misused. Internet policy guidelines should be clear to employees, precise but inclusive of all necessary information and self explanatory. The legal risks due to termination or suspension of an employee who is caught misusing internet facility should be disciplined. The internet policy must be able to protect business image by preventing employees from posting comments that somehow relate to the company in social media like twitter. From Telstra’s case, it is very obvious that an internet policy must allow employees access internet but with permission from nearest boss and internet policy staff. Training is an unavoidable part of strategic human resource management and hence, training employees on how to make use of social media can bring more positive results to the organization. A comprehensive internet policy must include following components:- Purpose: A clear description of Internet Policy purposes should be outlined Authority: The responsible authority or department for controlling and administering the policy matters must be given Access: who can access a social media needs to be well defined. Privacy issues: It is an imperative part of the policy. Whether employees are allowed to use social media; and if allowed what types of sites can be accessed, and what types of comments or blog contents can be used etc must be well written in the policy. Permitted uses: the internet policy must define the extent to which the social media can be used for private uses. Message and comments type: The internet policy must identify the types of messages are proper and messages or comments that are considered to be inappropriate. (Baker and McKenzie – 2008, p .1120) RECOMMENDATIONS From Policy to Success Landskroner (2002) says that an efficient internet policy can bring together the information a particular Human Resource management needs to craft. An efficient internet policy can surely maintain productivity and company can be protected from potential liabilities of sexual harassment, racial discrimination and other employee misconduct (p. 220). By giving employees clear guidelines on what is and what is not acceptable, both employer and employee can understand the parameters especially while dealing with social media sites. This helps an organization in its ways to success. Ways that potentially increase productivity are success keys and those that reduce productivity are the challenges. Giving certain rules and guidelines to employees can help increase productivity of employees by saving time, avoiding inappropriate use of emails and social media. An internet policy can be said to be a success only when considerations are given to what steps to be taken if the policy is unnoticed and human resource management must ensure that the implementation of the policy is consistent. For instance, when the employer facilitates blogging and allows employees to post comments there in, the employer must be aware of legal responsibility for the content. Employer must be clear with what happens when an employee breaches a particular policy and what action to be taken. According to Howard (2006), by informing employees that this sort of behavior is considered to be a breach of equal opportunity policy, the employer get defense to a discrimination claim of this type. Whenever employees are caught breaching the policy, they must be disciplined and it would bring success to the business (p. 139). Wagen (2007) suggests that all employees and volunteers should be given a copy of the internet policy and procedure guidelines and employees should sign that they understand that breaching of any rule may lead to dismissal (p. 175). Internet policy alone cannot make it a success, but proper communication and information passing forms to be a vital part of implementing the policy effectively. The computers and internet facilities provided to employees at workplace are the property belonging to the employer and hence employer should expect that employees will use these for business and professional development purposes. As emails and social media messages or comments can be considered to be legal evidences in a court of law, employer must take all necessary steps to minimize the risks and liabilities (Smith and Mazin, 2004, p 172). CONCLUSION Telstra became the first and model Australian business to bring well defined internet policy to protect company from any sort of internet misuse by its employees. Once its employee, Leslie Nasser, has been dismissed from employment for entertaining with many his satirical comments on Twitter, the internet policy became a matter of serious discussion among HR experts. It turned to be a turning point in human resource management for finding answer to how to manage employee internet misuse. Hundreds of companies worldwide have dismissed or terminated employees due to internet misuse. But, making it a policy is imperative in HR perspectives. This research paper presents the relevance of internet policy so as to increase employees’ productivity and minimize liabilities. This paper details the human resource perspective of internet policy and explains how an internet policy can help business achieve its goals. Social media dominate on young workers very quickly and it creates tendency of posting comments related to anything they wish is a crucial situation for human resource management and efficient policy only can work out to avoid further risks. What factors to be considered in setting and implementing such a policy has also been described in this paper. This research paper finds out that the internet use of employees should not be fully allowed or fully restricted. The employees need internet for professional development and hence employees must get access with due control on it. This paper concludes that employee is a valuable resource and it must be fully utilized. Internet is another resource and it must not be misused. A sound internet policy only can ensure that both these resources are properly and effectively used. 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Human resource magazine (29 May 2008), Productivity drops when personal internet use is banned, Retreived from http://www.humanresourcesmagazine.com/news/search/812753/Productivity-drops-when-personal-internet-use-banned/ Landskroner RA (2002), The nonprofit manager's resource directory, Edition 2 illustrated, John Wiley and Sons Noonan WJ (2004), Hardening Network Infrastructure, Illustrated Edition, McGraw-Hill Professional Smith SA and Mazin RA (2004), The HR answer book: an indispensable guide for managers and human resources professionals, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn Solis B and Breakenridge D (2009), Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR, FT press Stone R (2008), Managing Human Resources, 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons, Australia Wagen LVD (2007), Human resource management for events: managing the event workforce, Illustrated Edition, Butterworth-Heinemann Winterford B (Apr 20, 2009), Telstra staff given rules on use of social networks, itnews.com.au, Retrieved on 5/08/09 from http://www.itnews.com.au/News/142866,telstra-staff-given-rules-on-use-of-social-networks.aspx Williams P (July 2009), A Little Bird Told Me, Social Media, HR Monthly BIBLIOGRAPHY Briscoe DR and Schuler RS (2004), International human resource management: policy and practice for the global enterprise, Edition -2 Illustrated, Routledge Corpuz C (2006), Human Resource Management' 2006 Ed, Rex Bookstore, Inc Lisa Guerin L and Delpo A (2007), Create your own employee handbook: a legal and practical guide, Edition-3, revised, Nolo White JD (2007), Managing information in the public sector, Illustrated Edition, M.E. 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