Chapter 3: What s the Best Way to Manage Employees Instant Messaging Use?

Overview

Once you’ve screened your computer system and surveyed staff to determine the extent of your employees’ IM use (and misuse), it’s time to decide how to manage all that IM activity. Like it or not, you must take control of IM now, or risk getting blindsided by it in the future.

Between AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN, huge numbers of employees (probably including many of yours) are instant messaging at work. Thanks to unauthorized use, your organization’s valuable intellectual property could leave the system in an instant. Courtesy of inappropriate content, an IM-happy employee could trigger a lawsuit that costs your organization its priceless reputation and six figures in legal fees. A group of ‘‘trusted’’ managers could use IM to strategize their business plan, woo your clients, and instant message you right out of business. And thanks to IM attachments, documents are circumventing your e-mail attachment antivirus checks and possibly infecting your organization from the inside!

Responsible employers owe it to their employees, clients, shareholders, and corporate friends to manage employee IM use and keep liabilities to a minimum.

When it comes to IM management, you have four choices:

1. Ban workplace use altogether.

2. Exercise control over the situation by installing an in-house enterprise-grade solution to replace users’ personal IM software.

3. Take a middle-ground approach and support employees’ use of personal IM clients with technology that helps control content, monitor use, retain business records, purge nonrecords, enhance security, and reduce risks.

4. Limit access to employees who really need the technology to perform their jobs.