E-Mail, Internet Use, and Privacy Policies Assignment

E-Mail, Internet Use, and Privacy Policies - Assignment Example When employees are at the workplace, the main emphasis is normally given on improving the overall productivity and employee performance. E-mail and internet use among employees at the workplace have created issues that it is merely a time consuming and moreover, there can be issues of misuse as well. Employees may share the company matters with others or through social media like twitter or facebook and this adversely affect the company. Telstra, an Australian Carrier, and media company with 49000 employees have become an example of an organization that brought set of rules and regulations for employees regarding internet use (Peter Williams, July 2009). Internet policy is guidelines and instructions given to the employees regarding the use of internet facilities including surfing of the web, e-mail use, and social media and chatting etc. The main objective of internet policy is to increase employee productivity and reduce legal liabilities that may happen due to the employee misuse of the internet. Noonan (2004) emphasized that an internet policy must be able to define who is allowed to access the internet in the workplace and what types of access are permitted (p. 34). One of the main issues related with the internet is the misuse of social media like twitter.com, linkedin.com etc. according to Solis and Breakenridge (2009), public relations are ever changing and social media sites are empowering new domains of authoritative voices that should never be ignored. Social media can alter the entire media landscape because the power of influence can be placed in few hands if they have goods commenting power (p. 1).