Smart Policies for Workplace Technology: Email, Blogs, Cell Phones & More
- ISBN13: 9781413309263
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Keep your workplace safe — create a sensible technology policy with this all-in-one-guide. Sixty-eight percent of employees in the U.S. have sent emails that exposed their company to risk, and more than 229 million records have been taken from stolen business laptops or hacked business websites since 2005. It is no wonder, then, that technology dangers consistently rank number one on the list of employers’ concerns. Every new device that promises to make our lives easier brings with it the risk of misuse — whether accidental or intentional. That’s why it’s so important that any business that employs both people and computers create a safe and sensible policy for technologies in the workplace. Smart Policies for Workplace Technologies provides the tools employers need to assess your current policies’ effectiveness, along with information on how to draft or revise, then distribute and enforce your new customized policies. Learn how to protect your business with a policy tha… More >>
Smart Policies for Workplace Technology: Email, Blogs, Cell Phones & More
Technology changes quickly in our lives and in our workplaces, and it can be difficult to keep track of business policies regarding them. Smart Policies for Workplace Technology is an excellent reference. It is well written and can be easily understood. It does not go into detail on every single topic, but it does give you plenty of examples and starting points. Depending on the size of your business, the examples might be ready to use right out of the box. This is an good reference for any business person, but would be a great read for IT and HR personnel, as well as business management.
Another wonderful book from the NOLO Series and here we get a taste of what the rules, protocol, regulations and legal case histories, all for the Workplace with its evergrowing technologies we love.
What is beneficial is the amount of information one can arm themselves with entering the job market, or in your current workplace, concerning the major element of technology tools today, email, IM messages, cell phones, blogs, computer security, portable computers, PDAs, cameras, personal use of computers on company time, etc. …know your companies policies on these many tools. You may learn so much, that YOU may need to suggest to the employer policies. The book comes with sample policies for the workplace. It will benefit you as the employer or employee.
I enjoy the layout and design of the pages, shaded sections, boxed sections, wide margins for notetaking, nice use of white space, well-defined chapters. The books are compact, with nice quality white paper and an attractive glossy cover.
What’s interesting is the hard cold facts of legal case histories, to my surprise if a lawsuit is in the works, and if critical to the case, your home computer can be searched!
Author and Attorney Lisa Guerin has practiced employment law in government, public interest and private practice and author of several
other NOLO Series books:
The Essential Guide to Workplace Investigations: How to Handle Employee Complaints & Problems
Create Your Own Employee Handbook: A Legal & Practical Guide
The Manager’s Legal Handbook
This is another great book from the NOLO series: everything you need to know! ….Rizzo
No matter what size company one works for, if business is utilizing technology devices, there must be a written policy about them. Audits, cost justification on utilization of those devices and tools, incentive to protect corporate interest and enforcement of employees’ civil behavior is necessary. Author Lisa Guerin is an attorney and she does not go heavy on how technology works. Her brief and consize book gives real life examples of law suits between employees and employers on issues such as: e-mail (content and utilization), blogs (content), text messaging, cell phone utilization, issues with loss of hardware such as PDAs, blackberries and laptops that can fall into a wrong hands and allow confidential information to become public.
One point is unique in all cases. All employees feel that they can use tools given to them by the company in a manner that meets their (personal) needs. Corporations however feel that is not the case. Privacy laws do not apply to tools, hardware and services that are property of the corporation. There is also another aspect of this issue. It is not tolerated that employees use blogs and e-mail to demean their co-workers, talk about company in a non-flattering way, or criticise their managers publicly. So creation of policies helps the disciplinary aspect of managing corporate workforce.
Shortcomings of the book are that it does not cover employee use of desktop telephones at all. With VoIP telephony, these phones are very powerful and can provide both voice and data stream of information in addition to working in conjunction with wireless technology. Ms. Guerin is also unaware that overutilization of some of the cell phone features: ring tones, music files, games, cell phone screens can incur significant charges. There is no mention of abuse of international calling or even e-mail transmission (roaming) that can cost thousands of dollars per user. Texting is the most expensive way of communicating on wireless devices and it is unnecessary if employee has blackberry with e-mail access.
The advantage of the book is that it comes with CD that is easy to install. Sample of policies are available on that CD. However, each one will have to be tailored based on the needs of the organization.
Finally, the list of most annoying things employees do with technology does not cover the indiscriminate use of speaker phones on landlines and cell phones. Why do employees feel entitled to use speaker phones in the open space office environment instead of utilizing speakerphones in conference rooms only?
This book needs to be read by HR, technology and business managers. Everyone can learn from it.
Smart Policies for Workplace Technology: Email, Blogs, Cell Phones & More is a good start for any company that is reviewing their HR policies with respect to employee usage.
As an IT professional, I had expected more from the book, but the book is clear that it is written with an HR department in mind and in that regard, the book succeeds because it keeps the sections clearly defined and does not get bogged down in ‘techspeak’. I especially liked the blocked sections such as “Using the Internet”. Those sections gave clear examples of how to create a ‘policy’ that is clear and easy to read for all employees.
So while I had initially expected more, I felt that the book covered the need for workplace technology security basics and the need for these policies very well.
This book is great at making you aware of some possible legal issues for your company pertaining to various technologies.
You are provided a high-level overview of some of the possible issues that may arise from employees using their own or the company’s technology.
After the overview they provide you with some straight forward policies that you could put in place with very little wordsmithing.
The include CD contains the policies for blogs, camera phones, cell phones, email, IM, Internet, Portable devices, and software, so can quickly copy the text into your own policies.
This book is well worth the $20 price tag and I highly recommend it.