Putting a Stop to Cyberloafing@Work

If Unocal Corp. had any questions about how employees would make use of their newly provided Internet access, a disturbing answer came one day last summer.

An employee called the company’s computer help desk to ask for assistance downloading a file from the Internet, a file whose name happened to include the word “clubs.”

Suspicious, the help desk assistant inspected the file and discovered that it contained the names and addresses of topless bars.

That isn’t exactly the kind of information Unocal Corp. wants its employees culling from the Information Superhighway. Since then, the El Segundo-based company has issued an extensive Internet policy, and is building a system that will flash a warning banner across employees’ computer screens if they try to wander into the Internet’s red-light district.

“The bottom line with pornography and obscenity,” says Sondra Schmid, head of Unocal’s information security, “is you don’t go there.”

The Internet is a global web of computer networks, an electronic universe where workers can get the latest information on new products, book reservations for business trips and do research on almost any topic.

But many employers are discovering that the Internet also offers something else: a world of new ways for employees to waste time, a vast amusement park filled with thousands of electronic temptations ranging from sport scores to joke lists to steamy centerfolds.

It’s a growing concern, because the number of companies offering Internet access to their employees is exploding.

Although mainstream corporations have been linking up to the Internet for only about two years, a recent UC Irvine survey of 300 Orange County companies found that 63% are using the Internet. Of those firms, nearly one-quarter of the employees are already wired.

Big employers, such as Rockwell International Corp. and Chevron Corp., have given Internet access to tens of thousands of their workers over the past year.

And even though both companies have caught employees wandering in some of the Internet’s seedy neighborhoods, officials say they will continue to roll out Internet accounts at a rapid rate.

The Internet poses a vexing problem for corporations.

They are aware of its vast potential as a source of information and means of communication, and they don’t want to be left behind. Yet, they also fear that the Internet might lead to declines in employee productivity or, even worse, sexual harassment suits filed by employees offended by their co-workers’ on-line forays.

As a result, companies are increasingly worrying about how to handle a technology that holds so much promise, but is also strewn with many pitfalls.

Some companies are simply looking the other way in a gesture of employee trust, while others are so wary that they refuse to give employees Internet access at all.

But most companies fall somewhere between those extremes, behaving more like nervous parents trying to keep tabs on unruly teenagers. They let their workers roam, but they are monitoring where they go, what they do there and how long they stay.

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Few companies do this more aggressively than Simple Technology Inc., a fast-growing Santa Ana producer of computer memory products. Most of its 250 employees have all the equipment they need for Internet access, but company officials have doled out Internet accounts to fewer than 30. And the company watches almost every step those employees take during office hours.

Using a system the company designed itself, Simple keeps logs of every Internet site employees visit, and the company has assigned one of its computer technicians to go through the list daily.

“He looks for entertainment sites” that aren’t work-related, said Mehrdad Komeili, who manages the company’s computer network. “If there’s a site he doesn’t know, he [visits] it himself to find out what it is.”

Though employees are warned they’re being watched, they sometimes stray nevertheless. When they are caught, they usually get a written warning, although recalcitrant Internet surfers could lose their access.

That hasn’t happened yet, although the company has come close. One of the company’s product testers was given an Internet account so that he could keep up with competitors and also follow university research. Trouble was, he seemed more interested in checking sports scores than product specs.

“He was just wandering through the Internet all the time,” Komeili said. The worker was warned once, Komeili said, but “he waited a while and then he did it again. We gave him three notices over two months.” Finally, just as Komeili was ready to yank his account, the employee left the company for another job.

Komeili stressed that he believes the Internet is a useful tool, and that few employees abuse their access.

Since Simple started connecting employees to the Internet a year ago, he said, the company has passed out just six warnings to workers.

But Komeili said that Simple has no plans to curtail its monitoring activity because unlike the temptations of telephones, faxes or other office equipment employees can abuse, “the variety on the Internet is so great that a person can get addicted.”

As proof, Komeili said that groups of employees often stay at the company’s offices into the night, when they are allowed to explore the Internet for fun.

“You can spend hours and hours on the Internet entertaining yourself,” Komeili said. “If I had the time, I would too. That’s why I’m monitoring.”

Apparently, many employees at other companies don’t have to wait for the workday to end to do their surfing. Two of the most popular destinations on the Internet’s World Wide Web are the ESPN site, which offers sports scores, and the Playboy home page, which offers pictures of naked women.

Each of these sites gets nearly 4 million visits a day, and officials at both companies said peak hours are during the middle of the day on weekdays.

Statistics like that make executives nervous.

Officials at Western Digital, an Irvine company that makes computer hard drives, deliberated for six months before deciding to give employees Internet access.

At Rockwell in Seal Beach, the decision to offer access came quickly, but officials at the aerospace company then spent two months drafting a special Internet policy.

“There were forces--our lawyers--who were anxious about this,” said James Sutter, general manager of information systems at Rockwell. “Then there were people like myself who wanted to push forward.”

Few companies are rushing into the Internet faster than Rockwell. In September, the company bought copies of Netscape software--the most popular program for navigating the Internet--for all 82,000 of its employees at $5 a copy. Only about 20,000 employees actually have Internet connections so far, but that number could double over the next year, Sutter said.

Rockwell officials knew the Internet could bring trouble. Last year, an employee was caught downloading pictures of nude women and storing them on one of the computers that power the company’s network. But if Simple Technology has its hands full checking the Internet logs of 30 employees, how could Rockwell officials possibly keep track of 20,000?

The answer is that they can’t, so they don’t try.

Computer logs are created but not checked, and the company has blocked out Internet newsgroups that often center on controversial topics. But when it comes to monitoring employees’ productivity, Rockwell leaves that up to supervisors, not computer technicians.

“With all the layoffs in recent years, people out here find that their days are pretty packed with things to do,” Sutter said. “Can employees waste time on the Internet? Sure. But I think they would recognize the foolishness of spending a lot of time on the Internet.”

Many management experts say that the wisest approach to the Internet problem is one like Rockwell’s. Warn employees that their activities might be monitored, but show them some trust, and let their supervisors make sure they’re being productive.

“How do you ever know somebody’s working?” said Kenneth Kraemer, director of the Center for Research on Information Technology at UC Irvine. “You look at their output, and you have frequent conversations with them.”

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The Internet is just the latest in a long line of communications tools that have raised the fears of paranoid managers.

When the telephone was introduced, “there was concern among religious leaders that phones would make it easier for spouses to carry on adulterous affairs,” said John King, professor of information and computer science at UC Irvine. “Any time you give people new ways of doing things, they find ways of using it you don’t like. It’s not because they’re evil, it’s just because social conventions haven’t been put in place.”

Still, some companies have decided they’d rather not take the risk.

At Kimco Staffing Solutions, an Irvine-based temporary employment agency, only chief executive Kim Megonigal has an Internet account.

Tony Bruno, who manages the company’s computer network, said Kimco is paddling against the technological currents partly out of fear that employees would waste time and also because the pornographic elements of the Internet are too threatening.

“Pictures of naked ladies--that might not be the most professional thing to have on your screen as clients walk through the office,” Bruno said. “It’s just like the tool woman calendar in the mechanic’s shop. The less you give someone the opportunity to create that environment, the better off you are.”

A growing number of software products are making it easier for companies to control what their employees can access from the Internet. At NetworkIntensive, an Irvine-based Internet access provider, half of the company’s corporate customers are now asking for monitoring software, said Deanne Cecil, head of sales at the company.

If there is any note of irony in this Internet quandary, perhaps it is that the companies often blamed for creating the problems cannot escape them themselves.

At Playboy Enterprises Inc. in Chicago, employees are certainly allowed to check out the Playmate pictorials on the company’s Web site. “It’s no big problem, because we have a tendency to see it before it goes up on the Web,” said Thomas Ryan, who helped develop the Playboy Web page.

But lately, Ryan said, the company has started to think about cracking down on employees visiting other Internet sites deemed more frivolous.

“We’re looking into coming up with an Internet policy,” Ryan said, “because there’s a lot of people who just blow time on it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Accessing the Net A survey of Orange County businesses shows that a majority use the Internet:

Using Internet: 63%

Plan to use Internet in 1996: 20%

No plans: 17%

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Of the Orange County firms using the Internet:

* 52% have their own site on the Internet

* 23% of employees in these firms are given access

* 40% conduct business on the Net

* 45% advertise and provide product information

* 15% use it to take orders from customers

* 46% of international firms have their own site on the Internet, compared with 25% of domestic firms

* 52% of international firms conduct business on the Net, compared with 36% of domestic firms.

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Source: UC Irvine Orange County Executive Management Survey, 1996, based on interviews with 291 chief executives; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times