Sponsored by
Lawyer backs web block on network sites
A leading employment lawyer from Sheffield has backed businesses that are blocking access to social networking sites on company networks.
Diarmuid Deeney, from Halliwells, was commenting on research that shows that more and more firms are stopping staff from logging on to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
"The key issue here is productivity, particularly in these difficult times," said Mr Deeney.
"No employee wants to feel they're being policed, and such a feeling certainly isn't conducive to a healthy working environment, but I can understand why many employers are feeling the need to crack down.
"If they're not being used for business purposes, social networking sites can be a severe drain on bandwidth as they constantly refresh draining network capacity and on occasion can cause a company's entire system to crash. In addition, productivity is affected and businesses can be exposed to malicious software."
Three out of four companies are blocking social networking sites and a similar proportion are also blocking sites containing information about weapons. Two thirds block booze sites, slightly more than block webmail, and just over half block sports sites, according to research.
"All too frequently social networking sites are used to make derogatory and defamatory remarks about co-workers, managers or employers, which causes friction,"said Mr Deeney.
Buy The Star - Monday to Saturday - for local news, sport, features and ads. To subscribe CLICK HERE
READ MORE
Main news index
Your letters
Features
South Yorkshire's environmental news
Kids Zone
More business news
More Rotherham news
More Doncaster news
More Barnsley news
Latest sport
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Sheffield
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -6 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: -4 C to -1 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
