Nowadays, productivity is not just a buzzword, but a kind of mantra for many companies. And rightly so: Brazil ranks 50th in the productivity ranking, which evaluated 68 countries, according to a survey by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation. Obviously, the problem of Brazilian unproductiveness is much more complex and does not only concern the employees’ misuse of the Internet. However, smarter use of this feature can ensure significant productive gain.
Another survey, conducted by VoucherCloud, which interviewed over 1900 people across the UK, found that only 3 hours a day are actually applied in the execution of work-related tasks. In the remaining 5 hours procrastination takes over and almost 50% of that downtime is lost on the internet.
% of time spent in non-work situations:
- Checking social networks – 47%
- Reading news websites – 45%
- Discussing issues not related to working with colleagues – 38%
- Preparing beverages such as coffee and tea – 31%
- Break for smoking cigarettes – 28%
- Exchange messages – 27%
- Eating snacks – 25%
- Preparing food – 24%
- Making calls – 24%
- Looking for a new job – 19%
But how to control the internet without generating discomfort in the team?
First, the change must be in communication and in understanding the impacts and motivations of this measure. You have to show that you will not only be controlling or blocking some websites or applications, but an efficient management of the corporate internet. This will aim to increase productivity, but also the security of the data that travels in the network.
The control of access to the Internet is not only useful so that the employee does not waste time in social networks and maintains the focus and the productivity. This management mainly serves to prevent harmful websites and applications from being accessed, which can lead to put corporate data at risk.
It is important to remember that internet control is not limited to solving problems associated with productivity and security, but also helps to ease discomforts generated by access to content that may violate moral principles in the workplace, such as websites containing adult content, which aims for discrimination of all kinds, including gender, race, religion, among others.
Therefore, the main purpose that should be informed to the members of the organization is the increase in information security and content control that can really be harmful to the work environment, such as those mentioned above. With this access control one can reduce the occurrence ofShadow IT, also preventing the download of unauthorized applications and thus avoidsecurity breachesand all its consequences.
How to implement access control policies?
After this first moment of discussion among the members of the organization and understanding about the advantages of this type of action, it is necessary to define the guidelines, or policy, of internet use.
This set of standards should be thought together with the representation of all sectors of the company and must take into account the particularities of each function. The marketing department, for example, may have a differentiated policy that allows access to social networks, to be able to implement actions focused on “social”. While a logistics department, for example, may not need this type of access.
It is important that the Internet use policy establishes the rights and responsibilities of those who use it, in addition to being transparent in issues such as:
- Which employees can use the internet;
- Which websites and applications are approved;
- Situations considered abusive;
- Privacy of personal information, whether of customers, users or employees;
- Confidentiality of institutional information, that is, whether it can be passed on to third parties, among others.
What tools can be used?
In the market there are several accessible options that use Proxy Weband there are also robust and unified solutions such as UTM Firewall, which adds other information security solutions as well as access control to websites.
If you are still in the early stages of developing your security actions, we suggest you learn a little more about controlling access to the internet through web proxy solutions. We extract an excerpt from this article, which brings some important information that can complement this publication, so that you can understand a little better how this type of application works.
The web proxy assists in controlling the internet, through HTTP and HTTPs protocols, being responsible for managing access to websites and other applications based on these protocols. The proxy is widely used by companies of the most varied sizes and segments, contributing to the maintenance of the business security and productivity strategy.
The web proxy service allows the company to manage employee accesses based on URLs, schedules, user groups, and other levels of control. With the implementation of the service it is possible to have access to detailed navigation reports, including resource consumption, navigation time, most accessed websites, as well as other functions that assist in the evaluation of accesses of collaborators, in order to subsidize specific analyzes on the use of the resource, in the work environment.
Both Web Proxy and other types of solutions that control access to the internet can ensure greater productivity and security for your company. However, deploying a solution that does not cause discomfort to members of the organization is highly dependent on how managers will address this issue. The more transparent the process, the easier it will be accepted by all. So, do not forget to involve the teams in the whole process, so that the result of the implementation of controls over the use of the internet is a success.
