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Personal Email prohibited at work
9

Personal Email prohibited at work

Personal Email prohibited at work

(OP)
I have a gmail account which I use to email everyone- my family, friends, and some colleagues. I recently started working at a new place, which explicitly says "checking personal email accounts (ie. gmail) is prohibited."

I realize it is partly so I don't download viruses. However, I don't feel comfortable using my work email address for personal use (especially if I end up switching jobs in a few years or something). I have been putting in 9-10 hour days and  it's kind of a pain to deal with all of my gmail email at once when I get home.

My question is, how is replying to a few personal email during the day any worse then taking a couple personal phone calls? Is this really "enforceable"? I'll probably talk to the head of IT in the next couple of days about it and see what he has to say.

Don't get me wrong, I love the job and if I can't check my email I will deal with it. It's not so important to me that  I am going to run off and quit or anything.  It's just a bit of an annoyance.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

It's the company's computer; they have the right to dictate exactly how you use it.  The restriction was probably adopted in response to an ugly incident...  or fear of one.

IT guys don't take on headaches like that voluntarily.  If exceptions are allowed at all, you'll probably need to have your supervisor justify your request.  Talking to the IT guy will just tell you the allowed forms of action and the likelihood of success.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

3
Same rule here. I don't particularly like it but I entirely see the point. I'm waiting for the next step, banning personal emails from company email accounts.

Until then you can probably set gmail up to forward all your gmail email to your company account, and you may be able to set your reply to address as yuour gmail address (not so sure about that).

Cheers

Greg Locock

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Greg is correct in both regards.  You can setup a filter in Gmail and have it only forward certain emails to your work address.

I talked to our IT personnel about this same issue.  They told me the main "issue" is bandwidth, as most people tend to stay logged into various accounts the entire day.  I don't buy it as I know plenty of people streaming internet radios and that has to use more bandwidth that a simple ping to Google's servers, but that is the company line.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Here's my take on the matter...

Companies who "overly" restrict internet usage at work are only hurting the company itself.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Bear in mind that most companies will log all email and internet traffic.  In the event of someone wanting you fired, IT will probably be asked to dig up any dirt they can find.  As an aside, our email administrator is easily the best person to go to for gossip.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I like how our company handles it.

We have computers with restricted internet and company email at our cubes.  I had to get special permission to access this site from my cube.

At the end of each teams' section is an "engineering stations" that has less restricted internet on it.  At those computers, I can tie into my personal email.

All the computers are monitored and there are filters and restrictions on all the computers.  The company asks that personal emails and other personal stuff be done on the "engineering station" and be done off the clock.

Since it is only for a short period and the log in is not indefinite, it doesn't affect the bandwidth too much.

It has its plusses and minuses but it seems like a good compromise.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Our company recently instituted the same rule.  The reason...someone downloaded a virus and shut down the system at all plants.  It was not a pleasant week for that person.  As a matter of fact, I don't think they work here anymore.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

As a complete opposite to this story, I recently had the necessity to use my personal email on a worksite for two months, as my IT department couldn't extract the digit in order to arrange for my company email to work whilst out of the office.

Needless to say, we currently don't have those sorts of restrictions, and I wholeheartedly agree with SenselessSticker.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Wide- open access sounded like a good idea, until I got to help suppress a virus infestation.  It was kind of interesting to watch it grow and travel, but it had the entire company effectively shut down for most of two days.   

That was several years ago, when viruses were less plentiful, less aggressive, and had less commercial backing.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

My company has a weird filter which blocks alot of stuff and doesnt block some things, but we can check our personal email. My boss see's it as a moral thing, if we are getting our work done we are more then welcome to check our email.

The side note, with out my personal email i couldnt do some jobs. I have even had CAD drawings sent to me to my personal account because the companys email was crashed when i recived CAD files, also its limited to so 100mb of file space and some jobs had multipale drawings that filled 100mb up fast.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I have some friends who only use my work email, which I can access from home really easily.  I haven't asked for a ruling on that one yet from our IT people.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

We have several rules:
(1) No personal business on work email account.
(2) No personal business over the internet.
(3) No accessing non-work email accounts.

I'd thought (3) was covered by (2), but a few years ago they issued a separate edict, apparently out of concern that personal email is far more likely to contain viruses than work email (even spam).

It's not bandwidth, it's just policy.  (Streaming is banned for bandwidth reasons, plus (2) above.)  I can use the phone to check movie times or ask a friend a question but I can't do the same online.  The reason we're given for the difference is that there's an auditable trail for anything that's done online, and if someone wants to do an investigation into Waste Of Taxpayer Resources, the non-work stuff we do With Taxpayer Resources online can be tracked; what we do on the phone (or sitting at our desk reading People Magazine) can't.

That said, there are other state agencies in my state that don't care about personal use of work email addresses.

I don't fight it; I just shut up and obey.  I violate on occasion in a real emergency (or something I can call work-related, like needing to coordinate my real life with a work trip), but for the most part I am an obedient cog in the IT machine.  I fight with them enough about other stupid policy matters.

Hg

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I'd think most policies like this are simply ways to get you in trouble if management wants to get you in trouble.  Nobody wants to fire a new hire, go ahead and test the water by checking your personal email once or twice a day.  If its a real issue, you'll get a warning and you stop while perhaps checking out your other options.  Of course, we all have our own risk tolerance...

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

4
one question

are they paying you to be an engineer and work?

or

are they paying you to do personal emails and the internet?


policy is for supressing crap that come in emails and to attempt to limit the amount of surfing/emailing time which some employees take advantage

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

vesselfab--
You have a point, to a point.  

There are very few engineering jobs that would never let you make a personal phone call, and email these days has taken the place of a lot of what phones used to be used for.

There are very few engineering jobs that wouldn't let you sit and read a book at your desk during your lunch hour.  I can't surf the web from work (even if I forgo porn) on my lunch hour.

A sensible policy to me would be one that depends on the supervisor having some idea of the work vs. goofing off ratio of the employee, whether that goofing off is electronic or not.  A reasonable amount of time spent on non-work stuff shouldn't be any different now in the electronic age than it was before; I could have wasted as much time then doing crossword puzzles at my desk as I can now surfing the web, but I shouldn't be doing either.  It's just a little easier to disguise electronic goofing off as work being done--you can't hear them talk, there are no tell-tale pieces of printed matter on the desk, etc.

Hg

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

We have discovered that the internet is a great time waster in our office but at the same time a great tool.  We see giant spikes in usage during football season for fantasy football leagues, Christmas time and the March NCAA basketball tournament.  

Official we have a no personal internet usage allowed during working hours.  Lunch doesn’t count.  However we recently installed monitoring systems to track everyone’s usage and what they are doing.  While we don’t routinely inspect the log reports it is handy when needed.  An employee just knowing you have the software stops a lot of traffic.  Also our office is setup so that everyone’s PC screen is facing a door or open area.   This was not done intentionally but also works wonders.

In reality moderate use of the internet is no worse then the hourly smoke break smokers take or chatting around the snack area.  My main goal is to keep production up and employees happy, if this means letting them check their email then so be it.  If production slips I can stop the internet at anytime.  Happy employees are profitable employees, grumpy employees cost you money.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Grumpy employees burn the place to the ground and go to Rio.

As soon as employers realize this, the world will be a better place.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Is this not a classic example of the world we live in having gone mad?

I doubt many, if any, employers mind their employees using personal email or phone calls for that matter when they are needed, what they do not want is an endless stream of jokes and potentially virus infected attachments or personal messages that are not required during work time.

In the UK at least it is illegal to discriminate against anyone, so you either ban something completely, not at all or have a very complicated set of rules that need carefully monitoring.

We now have more communication power available to us than at any time, but we are not allowed to use it, mobile phones are also banned in many UK work places.

Common sense and reason seem a thing of the past; to me a t least this is the same as me being told when I buy a cup of coffee that it may contain hot fluid. Totally pointless and unnecessary but the only option open to the company.

The world is going mad I tell you.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

My employer has rules about phone, email, and internet use while I'm on the clock being paid.  Personal business of any kind is not allowed at any time, for any reason.  I follow the rules.
Always
(only exception is sick, injured, or dead relative)

I have personal rules about phone, email, and internet use while I'm on my own time and not being paid.

Company business of any kind is not allowed at any time, for any reason.
I follow the rules.
Always

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

There are some companies that truly do not want any employee to make one personal phone call, etc during work hours.  Most realize this is ridiculous and hurts moral, and all the things stated above.

Our handbook has verbage stating no personal phone calls, emails, etc.  It also says must be working at 7 and done at 5 and lunch from 1145 to 1245 everyday.  The reality is if an employee generally works hard and gets their stuff done but is late once or twice no one cares, nor will anyone care if they check their email.

The restrictive policies are in place to protect the company from abuse.  If an employee is always surfing the net, the policy can be listed as cause to can them.  If I surf the net to check a fantasy score or buy a gift online, but my performance doesn't change, likely no one will care.  But, if they want to fire me because of whatever reason, I've given them an out.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I have a comment to make ...

It's been said that you should act as if you're being spied upon ... meaning:  Don't do what you would regret if caught.  Simple ...

But I've also heard that some companies will easedrop on your computer usage and go through your emails ... and it's all legal (i.e. company policy, company computers, etc.) ...

But it's against the law for someone other than the intended recipient of a (snail-mail) package/letter/etc. to open it ... meaning:  My manager cannot open mail that is addressed to me.

Doesn't this concern people ???  In this age ... aren't emails similar to snail-mail ???  And shouldn't they be considered private ???

Just a thought ...

Cheers ...

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

That concept has already been tested and failed.  

Snail mail only uses what used to be an arm of the Government.  

Email, on the other hand, is sent in clear text, with no wrappers, and using company resources.  Now, if you encrypt your emails, and the company breaks the encryption to read them, you might have an interesting case to chew on.

TTFN

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Cheeseburger,

   I am not a lawyer.

   My understanding is that governments have explicitly designed the postal service and telephone as inviolate.  Also, the postal service and phone companies are not liable for what you do with their equipment.

   I am not aware that email and other stuff stored on third party computers has such protection.

   I used to be on a bunch of the old telephone BBSes.  When you logged onto these things, you were told that the sysops read all the mail, including the private ones.  Personal computers used to host BBSes were seized by the police when the users plotted criminal activiy.  The sysops protected themselves.

                     JHG

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Ah, "Inviolate". But not probably not inalienable i.e. it is either implicit or explicit that you have ceded those rights when on company property.

How many times do you hear the recorded message saying "This phone call may be recorded for training purposes."?

When receiving letters at a company or business address I suspect the only way the letters will be delivered unopened to you is if they are marked "Personal and Confidential."

If you are using a business address to receive mail the company presumably has a duty to its owners to ensure you are not your own mail order business, a drugs ring or anything illegal.
 
If you want to receive private mail, have it sent to your private address.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I have to go back up to what vesselfab said earlier in this thread and compare it to what subtech countered with.  In that most of us as engineers work principally with what is in our minds, and we can't leave our minds at our desk or turn off our minds when we leave the office, it is unreasonable for a company to deny a few moments to check personal e mail or do some internet surfing and then expect an employee to take calls or handle e mail (oh yes, the ubiquitos BlackBerry) outside of regular business hours.  This includes time such as staying over after work to get a crunch project done.

If we had jobs such as for example the cashier at a department store, where our work was limited to when we were at our work station, then I could see where such a rule would be necessary.  Who'd want to stand there waiting to be checked out while the cashier checked his/her e mail?

On the other hand, my company requires tons of work related time spent outside of regular business hours and away from the office such as e mails from my laptop at home, phone calls after hours, including time away from home for travel for company business, so I don't mind at all taking a few minutes each day and maybe even a couple of times a day when I am in the office to check personal e mail and even answer some that need immeditate attention.

And, yes, our corporate policy prevents it, and if they ever want to enforce it, then subtech's policy stated above will become my policy.  I'll leave the Blackberry and laptop at my desk.  They can't have it both ways.

rmw

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

My snail mail is more often than not opened by persons unknown, long before it ever gets to my building.  Someone opens it and time-stamps it.  I have a vague memory of someone trying to claim it was intended as a "convenience" to us (not only a ridiculous claim, but if the package is hard to open, they don't open it for me).

A very quick internet search doesn't get me the cite for what law applies to U.S. mail delivered to a business, and a deeper search would, of course, be a waste of my employer's time and resources, so I'll have to let someone else come up with a cite.

There is NO expectation of privacy on an employer-provided computer account, unless the employer tells you you can use your account for private purposes.  (University accounts, at least in practice if not by contract, tend to be for personal use--after all, what else would the students be using them for, and the faculty accounts are often not distinguished from the student accounts.  But even then the fine print probably says the account is strictly for academic use, etc.)

Everything I do during work hours or via the work computer, I do with the assumption that someone may read it later.

Hg

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

hey guys.

I was not saying that you should keep your nose to the grindstone for the entire day and wear out 27 pencils and some tablets.

Companies put that in the rules to curtail ""excessive"" surfing and personal business.

I've seen guys run a personal side business from their boss's company office.

that's stealing.

a few minutes here or there should not bother anyone.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

If I could be shown to be visiting a non-work-related website on a daily basis, say checking CNN headlines (as opposed to pulling up the occasional bridge collapse story), I would be in serious trouble here.

Sites that *might* be work-related seem to be ok.  No one has questioned me for looking at the weather, even though I go to weather.com and not the "approved" NOAA site.

But y'all are right; I think these days they aren't going through the logs with a fine-toothed comb like they used to (if nothing else, with budget cuts who has the manpower?).  I suspect they'll just do it if they're fishing for a problem.

I still choose not to push it, because it wasn't that long ago that they were enforcing the policy with sadistic relish.  I push my limits enough in other areas.

Hg

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Every time I worked for an employer who was a minute counter, as in constant emphasis on time spent on task, I have inevitable drifted into a being present mode. This seems what the boss wants so I comply. He watches the clock and so do I.
I refuse to use my home time to mull over problems keeping the job from getting finished.  
I have learned to refuse offers at companies with this mentality. I prefer to be engaged with my work somewhat creatively and this requires a little flexibility and respect in my work environment. Now concerns about IT security are certainly valid though I suspect mostly it is about managers ego and cracking the whip.

As far as the company reading your e-mails. The language in the US is phrases like. "Reading of an employees personal data available on the company property is allowed as long as it has a legitimate business purpose."

So the IT reading your mails to see how your getting along with your spouse is not allowed.
Reading your mails to see if you are divulging sensitive company info is allowed.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Gladly I never worked in a place like that. Maybe is my cultural background, but unlike US culture, I cannot make a clear cut between personal and professional time. If there is a need for me to stay for a couple of hours more in my office to finish a task, I will do it, even if uncompensated. If there is a need for me to go to my personal email to check some emails, or browse in the net to see some information, I will do it also. If I need to receive a call in night time because something happened in the production line, I will take it and if needed I will go back. As such, for me, these restrictions are really messing with my cultural background and I am not sure how I would cope with it. As some say, these rules are made to prevent abuse, but in case of something nasty happens between you and your employer, you should be aware that you are breaking the rules and that they will use this against you.
Good luck in your new prison.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Very commendable...

I think so long as you're not expecting the same loyalty in return, everyone will be happy.

Nonetheless, there's a difference between your volunteering uncompensated effort versus the company expecting the same.

TTFN

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

It is tough. At times I hate that we have access to it, because it's so tempting to check email and news, etc.

What I try to remind myself of is, I am damn busy and every minute I'm on the internet takes away from time to get other stuff done. I don't mind taking a break and using the internet and there are many work related tasks I can use it for as well.

That being said I always feel guilty using it and feel like I'm screwing off. And I should because I am when i use it.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

The company I work for has a policy of allowing "reasonable" personal use of email and the internet.  They have also covered their butts by including in the policy a statement of their ownership and right to access of ANY use of the internet, personal email included.  For this reason, I limit using my personal email and seldom access other sites that would contain personal information which I prefer to remain private, such as on-line banking.  Other than that, I pretty much use the internet as I see fit, usually engineering sites such as this or news/weather sites.  Moderation in all things.

Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

2dye4,
but until they read the emails, they won't know what is in them.....

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

PS
Never mind the company reading emails:
In the US it's a fair bet Homeland Security will have no problems reading them and this is probably true of most other countries these days. Of course, they'll have programs looking for key words phrases etc. and one wonders what sort of deals China and the like have with Google, MSN etc.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I'm not so bothered by Homeland Security reading my emails ... I have nothing to hide from them.  As JMW stated they're only cued into emails that contain certain key-words or phrases.

I'm just bothered that my employer can (when ever they want to) review any and all emails that I have written.  I feel (and I don't think that I am in the minority) that it is an invasion of privacy.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

"I'm just bothered that my employer can (when ever they want to) review any and all emails that I have written.  I feel (and I don't think that I am in the minority) that it is an invasion of privacy."

Unless said email is written on your personal time, on your personal computer, there is a logical case to be made that the email is the property of your employer.  While many employers don't mind some personal stuff, you have to keep in mind that your employer generally isn't paying you to do your Christmas shopping, and keep in touch with Aunt Millie.

Government employees in Canada have been reminded, in the past, that all email sent/received at work is subject to the Access to Information Act, and backup copies are kept for this purpose.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

It has been made quite clear to me that ANY email I read or write on a company computer is a legal document. Pre-email it was any correspondence or paperwork. This came about from a court case where I think it was literally tons of paperwork had to be shipped overseas and examined by the opposing lawyers.  

Therefore it does not seem unreasonable that the company should have the right to check exactly what was being written, by one of its agents, using its facilities.

Cheers

Greg Locock

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Well put, Greg.

Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Actually that reminds me.  A former employee where I work was sued for something which lead to lawyers people wanting to check through emails past and present.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I live a boring life but I am not to keen on the idea of employer peering into my personal life.  If you really want to write and check emails, use your cell phone.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Quote (TenPenny):

Government employees in Canada have been reminded, in the past, that all email sent/received at work is subject to the Access to Information Act, and backup copies are kept for this purpose.

I was going to bring that up as well.  We have the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the States.  That means yet another level of no expectation of privacy on work email.  It also means I really ought to be deleting email on the document management schedule, but that archive is just so darn useful...

Hg

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

If you want to test em use an encryption program for the text.
I've done it a couple of times just to see what might happen.
Nothing ever happened.
But if they liked me less it very well could have.

jmw
You are right they won't know the content until they read them but the wording is suppose to give some minimal protection to employees private lives.
For instance in front of a jury.
We read all of Bobs e-mails just for kicks. ( Bob wins lawsuit)

We read all of Bobs e-mails because he has been sending mails to our competitors  ( Bob looses and is fired )

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

(OP)
I still check news headlines and stuff  a couple times a day. but it's not like I track that time and charge it to overhead. 99% of the time it still ends up getting billed to a client, so it's not like the company doesn't lose potential income. granted, through the course of an 8 hour day, this is probably 20 mins or so.

A happy employee is a productive employee... and if checking email or news a couple of times a day makes an employee happy, then what's the bid deal?

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

There are games that were always played for defense jobs, since time is charged in increments of 6 minutes.  Since you round up, any activity that's less than 3 minutes isn't chargeable to a contract, while the other part of the 6 minutes gets the full charge.

TTFN

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I discovered something really cool about my work email over the weekend.  Not only can I access it from hom via some www connection and send/receive messages from home, I can also attach files to outgoing messages.  So I can send a message from work with home attachments, from home.  Wow!  I wonder when that will be clamped down upon?  My justification is that I check and reply to work emails on my own time.

- Steve

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Sure, anyone with an Exchange server could get that set up with a Microsoft Outlook interface.  Unfortunately, the web interface doesn't have the same visual features for messages and replies that Outlook itself has.

TTFN

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Dang, I tried to copy & paste the warning from my login screen & it wouldn't do it.  Anyway, it was a direct statement that no "right to privacy" is to be expected on the system.

Hg

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Do others in the defense industry seriously charge their time in 6 minute increments?  On my first day of work here I was told that is the official policy, but seriously I just can't be bothered tracking my time to that level of detail.  If I am working on a contract for one hour and I take a five minute break to go to the can, I still charge the whole hour and not .9 hours.   I figure it's all a wash anyway because on the other hand if say someone comes and asks me a question about a particular job and it takes me 5 minutes to answer it, I am not going to put .1 hours on my time sheet for that contract.  I charge my time in .25 hour increments because that seems more reasonable to me.  Even then it is still not 100% accurate since we track our time manually anyway.   

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

spongebob, The first "contract" time sheet i turned in, i read the instructions and did everything in 0.1 increments as the instructions said, and the boss told me

"WTF is this? re-do your time sheet in 0.5 hr increments, i dont want to deal with this sh!!!T"

Now I dont fill out time sheets sad

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Billable minutes?
What are lawyers doing in this forum?
Oh, silly me, they must have reviewed the time sheets format.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

spongebob007,
When I worked for a direct military contractor, we had to account for our time in that manner.  It was usually rounded to the nearest .5 hours, because as Gymmeh infers, it is a royal PITA.  It would get to the point where you had to charge overhead just for filling out your timesheet.
Luckily, I have since worked for several military sub-contractors, and time reporting is much more reasonable.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - Robert Hunter

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

We are told to charge 1hr minimum to overhead every day, regardless if we take breaks or not.  The fun starts when we are told we are getting close to cost overruns and are asked to log 4hrs maximum on any given program per day.  I'm starting to love Defense jobs.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

My favorite is the impromptu meeting called after 3pm on Fridays.  Since we had to sign and turn in our timecards by 2pm, whoever calls the meeting gets free work.

My current company now requires timecards to be submitted by 9am Mondays.

TTFN

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RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Personal email - get unlimited data on your cell phone and get a gmail account

I wish we had a prohibitive policy at work and then maybe I'd quit getting chain letters about having bad luck for 10 years if I don't pass it along to 10 people.

Rules have to be put in place because "common sense ain't."

Brian

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

gmail
I don't feel comfortable knowing that google keeps everything you send or receive in perpetuity.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - Robert Hunter

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Ah timesheets, especially for the military.  We were a bit more laid back in the UK but...  We had an administration 'slop' number but... we weren't meant to book to it, at least no significant amount.  So you ended up amortizing toilet breaks etc across jobs.  

Like I said they didn't take it as seriously in the UK but it still didn't seem right.

I rarely used .1, I'd usually use .25 and round up or down as I deemed fit.

When I managed my own projects I'll let you guess which way I normally rounded!

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Just wanted to add an interesting policy I used to have at an old job:

We had your standard filters, firewall, etc. The fun thing would be our IT department would record EVERYTHING you would see on the web along with how much time you spent surfing. At the beginning of each week, they would post the rankings of ALL the employees (yes including the bosses) web surfing times along with a list of every website they visited. Definitely left everything in the wide open.

I accidentally left a baseball game website on one evening and got moved to the top of the list. My boss found out and was understandable about it.

Regarding the whole internet policy, it's kind of a two-sided coin. My boss once snuck up behind me one day to see what I was working on. I had an IE window open and like that I got a whole "You have work to get done. You shouldn't be surfing." Later that day, I handed him a copy of a EU patent that was very similar to a project he had me working on. He asked where I found the patent and all I could say was "surfing".

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

How many of us are looking at this website while at work??

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

me

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I spend most of my time here while at work.  I log-in once in the morning, and leave it logged in the whole day until I go home.  I have also forward URLs and print out pages from this site and give them to bosses and managers to let them know the value to be found here.  I've never had a problem during my 7yrs visiting here.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Me. I'm always at work.... in fact, it might be useful to log my time on Eng-tips to show that even when I'm home, I'm working.
Not sure if anyone will wear that one, but as a counter offer to "time wasting" it should be good.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

MiketheEngineer,

it's a fact that you don't get many responses during the weekend. blush

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

And yet on a Monday morning when I log in there's usually more posts (in the forum I frequent) than Tue-Friwinky smile.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I'm always on Eng-Tips at work. Always looking for ideas. You never know when one of these crazy engineer's ramblings will provide a jewel of information.

V


RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

I log on till about 9:30 take coffee break,  then after I normaly am busy doing other things till lunch, then I get on for lunch. Then work till 3 or so and then depending on the work load, I will leave eng-tips on till I leave.

I have found a many good gems here. or information that got me headed in the right direction.

RE: Personal Email prohibited at work

Lots of good points - I really like the usage ratings on the bulletin board... Keeps everyone honest

My take is business only on email and do your best for phones.  Companies are too damn politically correct and perception is reality (I hate that).  You need to maintain traceless squeaky cleanliness.

The computer and all peripherals belong to the company and any press of the keyboard is potentially recorded and could be put in your face.  If you want anything on your personal email to become permanent record within your company, go ahead.  Even if the policy is not there, it is not a good idea due to the above fact.  It is scary how far this could go.  Keystroke recorders etc.  If they really want to find out more, you can easily give them a gateway to find anything they want to about you.  I believe it is best to keep my personal life separate from my job even though I don't have much to hide.  

Otherwise keep your laptop available in your car - there's a wifi somewhere nearby during your lunchbreak.  Many people work out of a mobile office.  Do your personal or very personal duties in it or do them at home.

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