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Merrill Lynch Says No To Having A Personal Life At Work

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the don't-you-dare... dept

Thu, Aug 7th 2003 5:22pm — Mike Masnick
Merrill Lynch has announced that, as of tomorrow, their employees will not be able to access any outside email provider, like AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail. It's certainly understandable why they're doing this. There are the legal reasons, of course, where they're being told they need to keep track of all correspondence. There are also the productivity arguments, where they say people shouldn't be doing non-work things at work. I don't think either of these arguments hold too much water. On the legal front, it's simply impossible to track all communications. People will find a way around this, whether it's just talking in person or using some other means to communicate. As for the productivity arguments, I don't buy it either. If someone is abusing their internet access and not getting work done, then go ahead and discipline them. However, simply cutting them off blames everyone for the few bad workers, and tells employees that management just doesn't trust them to do their jobs. If you cultivate an environment where you don't trust your employees not to goof off, your employees will pay you back the favor by goofing off in other ways. Studies have shown that letting employees take care of some personal stuff at work actually pays off greatly, because they spend more time at work and they're more likely to get additional work done at home.
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  • identicon
    Chris, 8 Aug 2003 @ 5:37am

    No Subject Given

    Qwest tried this when I was with them 2 years ago. it took us about 10 minutes to figure out that they couldn't block pop3 email if you routed through SSL.
    Maybe Merryl has a better system, but I bet your right and some renegade IT admin will have it beat before the end of the first day.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Any Financial Services Institution, 8 Aug 2003 @ 6:23am

    We've been doing this forever

    As a Financial Services company, the SEC requires one to monitor ALL communications (e-mail, IM, etc.) with customers, and it is specifically against our AUP to try to circumvent this. It's not like it's fun blocking e-mail sites as they pop up, but they save us from getting sued because they claim that their broker sent them an e-mail about a hot stock tip from their broker's personal e-mail account. See Frank Gruttadarria's case for what happens when you don't monitor/block your employees' external e-mail/Internet access at work.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2003 @ 6:43am

    No Subject Given

    You're missing the point on this one Mike. They are required to monitor (or make the very best damn attempt they can) all traffic. By creating this policy they are saving themselves several potential legal problems. Yes, there are always ways to circumvent these kind of things however, with this policy in place, they may terminate the employee on the spot without to much fear of a wrongful termination suit.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Mike, 8 Aug 2003 @ 9:14am

      Re: No Subject Given

      But they already had this in place for their brokers, which is who it should matter for. Now, they're doing it for everyone else as well, which doesn't make sense.

      Besides, I do mention the legal aspect, I just don't think it makes any sense.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Milnesy, 8 Aug 2003 @ 10:35am

    My site does the same thing.

    We lock down any of the outside email (Yahoo, hotmail) and kill any pop3 email (since we use Lotus Notes, I know ... feel sorry) and run scans to see if we are using any of those apps. Add on top of that, we just were told that we have to scour the users desks, lock em down, and remove any instant msg programs... and block those ports.

    I can see where they are coming from (Merrill) but in the end it makes the empolyees less productive. A break every now and then is good for the employee.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Peteo, 8 Aug 2003 @ 2:08pm

      Re: My site does the same thing.

      I wonder how you track down people with Hip Tops or PDA's with celluar access. There is no way to stop people from checking their email or voice mail.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2003 @ 3:04pm

        Re: My site does the same thing.

        There is also another consideration to look into, virus propigation in the workplace. My company uses antivirus products at three different points in the network. one of which it the users desktop. By allowing employees access to their net based email accounts two out of three layers of protection are side-stepped. During the last 2 years three major virus infections have been traced back to hotmail type accounts.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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