Usage of social network sites during working hours; we have an email and internet usage policy in place. However, there are a few computers in the Company that are used by more than one person, so the tracking of who was using it is nearly impossible. On the social network sites like Facebook, you can see posts being sent at certain times, so you can track if the employee was using them during working hours. Can you discipline an employee in this instance? The concern is that some employees have internet access on their mobile phones so they can argue that they sent these posts during break time from the mobile phone. I would like to find out the best practice in those situations.

Please see last month’s with regard to the general right of an employer to monitor employees at work. In order to be able to discipline employees for inappropriate internet usage, it is important to have a very clear internet usage policy which expressly forbids the use of social network websites such as Facebook and Twitter during working hours.

Practically speaking, however, and particularly in circumstances where Company computers are used by a number of people, such a policy can obviously be difficult to enforce. Therefore, it is also advisable to implement appropriate firewalls on all Company computers, such that employees are simply unable to access forbidden websites. Disciplining