Welcome to a free market economy (the job market) with informed customers.
Just because the job market is facilitated by networking doesn't mean that as an employer I am supposed to pay salaries, rent, etc. to facilitate that "job market." If you're looking for jobs then go to monster.com. I am not in the business of informing the consumers (job seekers) of where else they can go to get work. This is like McDonald's listing a menu for Burger King, just to help facilitate the market.
The point is not to keep people from talking to co-workers. Non-solicitation agreements between employers and employees are designed to serve that purpose (to the limited ability that they can). What we're really talking about is paying someone to stay on for two weeks or so, during which time they can cause harm to an employer by driving away other resources. This is especially important for sales related functions, as it is very easy for word to "get out" to customers that someone is leaving, and of course that can lead to customers leaving with the salesperson. Of course they can talk to co-workers off-hours (assuming they didn't sign an agreement prohibiting that), but you want to minimize damage by not facilitating it.
Again, nobody is trying to stifle the job market, but employers need to be aware of the risks involved with short-term employees.
Keep in mind that it's not about the employees who intentionally badmouth the company. More likely, you have someone in the office who is leaving, and everyone asks him/her why. A typical response may be "I found this great job over at XYZ Inc., and the pay is better, benefits are great, good work hours...etc." Of course, you're the manager and you can just feel the wheels turning in the minds of your own employees while their colleague preaches about how the grass is greener on the other side.
I'm not making these scenarios up, I've seen them happen. Basically the policies should be reasonable without being overly anal or overly naive. I also think the policy should reflect the workforce. If you're dealing with more professional, or mature employees, then you may want to treat them differently than employees just out of high school. However, it is a wise idea to use one policy across the board for all employees at a single company, so just keep your workforce in mind when designing the policy.
I used to work for an ISP that used spamhaus as well as a few other black lists, and we found once or twice that some of our address space was blacklisted on various lists. As soon as we figured it out, we would contact the blacklister and find out why we had been listed. Typically it was due to a customer of ours who was spamming (intentionally or by virus) through our network, and the blacklist was the first we'd heard of it. We would immediately turn them off, or cancel their services if it was intentional, then contact the blacklister and ask to have the entries removed. This was a rather quick process, and it paid off in the end. We blocked MASSIVE amounts of spam (I don't recall the rejection rate but it was very high).
As for the customers, if they had something like a virus or an open relay, we'd test their network before allowing their traffic through our network again...not quite as fast a process.
Shaun Gabb, director of the anti-censorship organisation the Libertarian Alliance, said: "If you are criminalising possession then you are giving police inquisitorial powers to come into your house and see what you've got, now we didn't have this in the past."
I can't agree with this statement by Shaun Gabb. Whether you agree with the law or not, I'm not sure that banning posession of one more thing will open the flood gates for invasive searches any more than any other ban does. Further, if the item in question is one that "ought" to be banned, then it ought to be banned on its merits alone, not on whether it will give police something else to search for based upon whatever reasonable cause requirements they have in the UK.
Now it is debatable whether the posession of certain items should be banned to begin with, but Shaun's argument seems irrelevant in this case.
There was once a time when people died for their freedoms. Now the claim is that in order to have security, we have to give up freedom. How secure is it to defy your parent country's sovereignty and start your own union? Thats what the United states did. Many had to sacrifice freedom for those rights. Now, the same issue arises, and many turn to an aristocracy to tell them what to do in the name of 'security.' I don't know what the best trade off is, but I certainly feel wrong about sacrificing civil liberties in the name of one politician's so-called "security"...whether that man be a king or a president or an entire congress. What's wrong is wrong, and what's right is worth fighting for.
And no, I'm not afraid to give my life so that others can understand true freedom of choice. I believe the United States needs to turn back to some of its roots.
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Just because the job market is facilitated by networking doesn't mean that as an employer I am supposed to pay salaries, rent, etc. to facilitate that "job market." If you're looking for jobs then go to monster.com. I am not in the business of informing the consumers (job seekers) of where else they can go to get work. This is like McDonald's listing a menu for Burger King, just to help facilitate the market.
The point is not to keep people from talking to co-workers. Non-solicitation agreements between employers and employees are designed to serve that purpose (to the limited ability that they can). What we're really talking about is paying someone to stay on for two weeks or so, during which time they can cause harm to an employer by driving away other resources. This is especially important for sales related functions, as it is very easy for word to "get out" to customers that someone is leaving, and of course that can lead to customers leaving with the salesperson. Of course they can talk to co-workers off-hours (assuming they didn't sign an agreement prohibiting that), but you want to minimize damage by not facilitating it.
Again, nobody is trying to stifle the job market, but employers need to be aware of the risks involved with short-term employees.
Keep in mind that it's not about the employees who intentionally badmouth the company. More likely, you have someone in the office who is leaving, and everyone asks him/her why. A typical response may be "I found this great job over at XYZ Inc., and the pay is better, benefits are great, good work hours...etc." Of course, you're the manager and you can just feel the wheels turning in the minds of your own employees while their colleague preaches about how the grass is greener on the other side.
I'm not making these scenarios up, I've seen them happen. Basically the policies should be reasonable without being overly anal or overly naive. I also think the policy should reflect the workforce. If you're dealing with more professional, or mature employees, then you may want to treat them differently than employees just out of high school. However, it is a wise idea to use one policy across the board for all employees at a single company, so just keep your workforce in mind when designing the policy.
I used to work for an ISP that used spamhaus as well as a few other black lists, and we found once or twice that some of our address space was blacklisted on various lists. As soon as we figured it out, we would contact the blacklister and find out why we had been listed. Typically it was due to a customer of ours who was spamming (intentionally or by virus) through our network, and the blacklist was the first we'd heard of it. We would immediately turn them off, or cancel their services if it was intentional, then contact the blacklister and ask to have the entries removed. This was a rather quick process, and it paid off in the end. We blocked MASSIVE amounts of spam (I don't recall the rejection rate but it was very high). As for the customers, if they had something like a virus or an open relay, we'd test their network before allowing their traffic through our network again...not quite as fast a process.
There was once a time when people died for their freedoms. Now the claim is that in order to have security, we have to give up freedom. How secure is it to defy your parent country's sovereignty and start your own union? Thats what the United states did. Many had to sacrifice freedom for those rights. Now, the same issue arises, and many turn to an aristocracy to tell them what to do in the name of 'security.' I don't know what the best trade off is, but I certainly feel wrong about sacrificing civil liberties in the name of one politician's so-called "security" ...whether that man be a king or a president or an entire congress. What's wrong is wrong, and what's right is worth fighting for.
And no, I'm not afraid to give my life so that others can understand true freedom of choice. I believe the United States needs to turn back to some of its roots.