How companies handle online porn

By COREY TAULE

ctaule@postregister.com

Buell

Idaho Falls businesses have several ways to deal with employees who view pornography.

A random check of Web sites visited by Idaho National Laboratory employees unearths something "inappropriate."

Mark J. Holubar, director of human resources for INL contractor Battelle Energy Alliance, calls the employee in for an uncomfortable meeting.

"Yeah, I know I did it," the employee tells Holubar. "I know it was wrong. I don't know why, I was just doing it."

Holubar's had several similar conversations the past few years -- more than two dozen to be exact. In the two years Battelle has run the lab, 30 employees have either been disciplined or fired for inappropriate computer use, mostly porn.

Even more worrisome is these people did it knowing their Web use was closely monitored. The lab has sophisticated equipment and investigators who smoke them out.

"We make that well-known," Holubar said. "They will get caught."

"It's so bizarre, because they know they're watching and they still do it," said Gordon Boyle, a pastor at Calvary Chapel Church in Idaho Falls who has counseled former lab employees. "I don't think we understand the grip or the pull."

Holubar

Dealing with online porn is an everyday reality not just for INL but for large corporations, government agencies, small businesses and even school districts.

Sex Tracker, an adult search engine, reports that 70 percent of porn is downloaded between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Another source, ComScore Networks, reported in 2003 that 37 percent of at-work Internet users in the United States visited an X-rated site from work.

So, dealing with porn has simply become part of a company's business plan.

For example:

INL constantly runs reports on sites visited by employees.

One of eastern Idaho's largest employers, Melaleuca Inc., limits its employees to "company-approved Web sites."

"It's a weird environment we live in," Melaleuca CEO Frank VanderSloot said.

The Post Register enforces a zero-tolerance policy for improper Internet usage among employees.

Plothow

Idaho Falls School District 91 has a network administrator who constantly monitors thousands of computers, making sure Web filters keep kids away from not only pornographic sites but also sites such myspace.com and facebook.com.

"My job is to stay ahead of the kids, and try to figure out what they're doing to get around the filter," said Jeremy Buell, the district's network administrator.

The school district has a sophisticated filtering system that catches most problems. Even so, kids still manage to get around it.

It's the same at workplaces that monitor computer use.

But in these cases, interlopers don't face detention. They lose jobs.

The Post Register has fired two employees in the past five years for misusing computers, Publisher Roger Plothow said.

One was fired immediately. The other got a second chance and blew it.

Lost productivity is an issue, Plothow said, and liability also is a potential problem.

VanderSloot

Plothow said he assumes there is more inappropriate activity at the paper than has been discovered, but that those people are risking their jobs.

Porn at work is nothing new, but the Internet is making it a wider spread problem.

Holubar, who has spent 25 years doing human resources work, remembers ordering employees to remove Playboy centerfolds from their cubicles.

The Internet, he said, has simply elevated the problem. It's not as obvious and not as easy as telling someone to remove a picture.

"The difference is that there's a productivity issue and a resource issue," he said. "It's the time and the money that's spent, which makes it a much more serious issue than we had before."