Poor Employee Performance Synonymous with Poor Bandwidth Management

The average?? Canadian employee spends 40 minutes per day on major social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. This figure amounts to roughly 1 week of annual loss in productivity - or over 2 Billion dollars. And that???s just in Canada! The continued evolution of online applications coupled with poor network management policies have resulted in an ever-increasing onslaught on corporate networks which have left corporate executives, business owners and IT managers scratching their head. The problem stems from several sources: 1. Poorly devised company policy structure outlining the use and management of online profiles. 2. Lack of communication with employees and managers outlining use of such social media tools. 3. Poor or non-existent bandwidth monitoring responsible for auditing the network and the applications used. 4. Non-existent 3rd party auditing of existing network policies. The solution for the first two will be different for each company and organization. They are internal processes which vary according to industry, business practices, company policy and employee education. The third problem is usually a result of poorly managed firewall and bandwidth management rules resulting in lack of control or knowledge of what is happening on the corporate network. Worried? Don???t be - SmarttNet can help. Every time an employee or other network user surfs the Internet, there is a complex interaction between routers, switches and servers which together share data, give permissions for access and allow the user to find the information they are looking for. Within a corporate network environment, the gatekeeper of this data ??? the device which is responsible for permitting or denying access to certain applications ??? can be a centrally managed firewall. With a properly managed set of central firewall policies, access to applications, websites and other sources of information ??? including social media networks ??? can be limited, controlled or eliminated altogether. This practice has been in existence for many years ??? particularly to limit the access to major, well known sites and eliminate dangerous web based viruses and attacks. However, with the ever increasing popularity of Web 2.0 and social media sites, the line between acceptable, sometimes acceptable and never acceptable sites is becoming blurred. And, with the continued increase of Web 2.0 sites, knowing what should be defined under which policy requires expertise and advice. Managed centralized firewalls now require policies which are managed by experts, provide fluid and audited data and can help decision makers understand what their employees are doing and why they are doing it. Executives and managers want to quantify time spent on various social media sites and the impact it has on their business. How can such emergence of new technology be used as an advantage? Only after this information becomes available can proper company policies be implemented or existing policies changed. Consider your company???s corporate network and data bandwidth management policies. Are your practices suitable for Web 2.0?