Many businesses are now implementing a company internet usage policy for a number of different reasons. One of the main reasons that they do this today is so that they can actually control just how much time their employees spending on the internet. In fact a large amount of time in business is wasted because employees spend vast amounts of time using the internet for personal rather than business purposes.

As we all know the internet has become an important part of modern living and therefore it is important that all businesses should have an internet usage policy in place. It is these types of policies which employees should be informed of when they first start working for any company. The policies will help to ensure that the employees are not using the internet and therefore the company’s computers inappropriately.

Below are some guidelines that a business should be thinking of using when they are looking to set up any kinds of policies in relation to the use of the internet during business hours.

1. The first thing that any business owner should be looking at when setting up such policies is for them to consider just who within the company requires the internet and why? You may actually find that the kind of business you are running does not actually require all members of staff to have access to the internet. So you may find as part of your internet usage policy you only provide it to those employees who actually do need it.

2. You then need to check exactly what kinds of websites it is your employees need access to? A great way of ensuring that these employees only have access to those sites that they need is by setting up a separate server where they will be allowed access to them. By doing this a business will be able to save themselves a lot of time that would normally be taken up by employees searching the internet for information of a personal nature which they will be prevented from doing. However those who do need to access the internet can do so by using a password that has been provided to them.

However if you are a company that is allowing all their employees to have access to the internet then rules and regulations must be in place that will restrict the amount of time that they use it for their own personal use. So therefore when writing up any kind of company internet usage policy document it should clearly shown within it when employees are entitled to use the internet for personal searches and when for company work. To ensure that your employees are sticking to the guidelines provided then a good quality tracking software program should be installed. This will then help you to track when and what your employees are using the internet for. However again employees must be made aware that their use of the internet is being tracked.