READER QUESTION
What are some good solutions for "cyber-slacking," i.e., employees spending time on the Internet?
Chris Barber, Senior Vice President/Chief Information Officer, WesCorp, San Dimas, Calif.
An interesting way to go about behavior modeling is to relate the Balanced Scorecard concepts back to tracking employee time. In the "Internal Business Processes" perspective of the scorecard, metrics can be defined that will track the effectiveness of satisfying clients (both internal and external) and achieving financial objectives.
Business metrics may be an even more effective measure of tracking productivity.
It flips the employee monitoring problem from "watch for the bad behavior" to "how are we tracking the good behavior/outcomes."
In that case, if you track the business metric and are showing outstanding results it shouldn't matter if someone is goofing off online because their work output is very strong.
John Schooler, Senior Vice President/General Manager of RealTime Systems, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., Maitland, Fla.
There are many software packages available to track, monitor and report on employee Internet usage. Probably the best known is called WebSense, but there are many others available-just Google "monitor Internet usage."
These packages produce a variety of reports and charts to indicate how employees are spending time and where they are traveling on the Internet.
They also provide the ability to block inappropriate sites and sites that provide band-wasting feeds such as streaming audio and video.
It can be quite time-consuming to review these reports regularly to spot potential abuse as many employees routinely need to use the vast resources of the Internet for entirely legitimate and productive reasons.
In my opinion, nothing substitutes for good middle and upper management who are aware of their employees' duties and productivity and know when employees need supervision and address performance issues head on.
Tom DeSot, Executive Vice President-Vulnerability Research & Regulatory Affairs, Digital Defense Inc., San Antonio
The organization needs to ensure that it has published a clear and concise acceptable use policy that outlines their expectations regarding the use of the Internet.
The policy should clearly define what the user is allowed to do and should make it apparent to the user that the institution can monitor all of their Internet traffic.
Each user should be required to acknowledge the policy, and then it should be reinforced with recurring information security training to explain why adherence to the policy (limit bandwidth consumption, avoid the potential for the introduction of spyware, etc.) is important.
Users should be required to sign off on a training attendance sheet and a copy of the document should be filed in HR for reference purposes.
READER QUESTION
Are there any effective programs for helping employees from throughout our CU develop better ways to deploy all kinds of technologies?
Janet Wall, Senior Vice President-Customer Services, XP Systems, Moorpark, Calif.
Helping employees deploy any technology is most successful when an effective learning program is in place.
At XP we help credit unions deploy new system technology through a blended approach of live and web training, with the newest element being interactive e-learning courses.
Even though e-learning is self-paced and available to students at any time of day, credit unions need to set aside dedicated time for employees to learn what the technology deployment means to them.
Credit unions tell us that e-learning has resulted in a decrease in technology training time and a higher skill level when training is complete. In some cases, they have reduced training time by half.
When it comes to deploying technology across an organization, credit unions are getting excellent results with e-learning.
John Schooler, Fidelity National Information Services Inc., Maitland, Fla.
There are a variety of technologies available to manage desktop environments; however these can be expensive and require a lot of technical care and feeding to maintain.
It really depends on the size of your network operation and the depth of your technical staffing and investment as to what particular network and desktop management may be practical for your credit union.
A small investment with a network consultant would be a good way to learn more about what is available and what would fit your needs. Of course, nothing pays off better than investing in employee education when it comes to technology.
How many of us really utilize the capabilities of even the most common desktop software such as Word or Excel to their fullest?
Tom DeSot, Digital Defense Inc., San Antonio
The answer here is simple. A proxy server, put in place between the users and the Internet gateway, will provide the institution with a very adequate means of tracking where users are going, and depending upon the technology, the added ability to block their traffic before it ever gets to the Internet.
There are open source products (Squid, etc.), if the institution has budget constraints or wants to do something in a test bed setting.
As well, there are a wide variety commercial products that also have the added benefit of being able to block malicious JavaScript, Java applets, and spyware.
Some products may also provide time-or location-based restrictions that allow users to only browse the Internet at certain times during the day, or from certain computers that exist within the enterprise.
Regardless of the choice, all of the products will give the institution the ability to monitor the sites that users are visiting, and then report on them as needed for counseling and corrective action.
Chris Barber, WesCorp, San Dimas, Calif.
The first thought is that employees would not be in a position to directly deploy technology; it should be an IT staff member or someone with the right expertise in that area. What employees could and should do is to help identify how technology can augment their business processes and create efficiencies or new services for the CU. These ideas should be input to the IT process such that the business processes and needs are helping to drive the technology decisions.
Readers: Ask CUJ Technology Panel Experts
Readers can leverage the Credit Union Journal's panel of technology experts by submitting any technology-related questions to the panel Managing Editor Lisa Freeman at lfreeman
