By now, you’re well aware of the Internet’s Catch 22 nature. Your business needs it so that employees can be equipped to do their jobs, but it can also be a major distraction and kill productivity. For this week’s tip, here are three ways that you can cut back on Internet distractions and maximize productivity.

For a major task like this, you’re going to need something a little more persuasive than making a new policy. The allure of cat videos is much too strong for a measly policy. To cut back on Internet waste, you’re going to need something more powerful like a content filtering solution from Network Synergy.

Decide How Much Monitoring You Need
As the business owner, you’re the one making the call for what websites aren’t allowed on your network. Content filtering allows you to be as strict or as lenient about Internet viewing as you want. For you, this means making some tough decisions and sticking to them. Do you lock everything down and block every site that’s remotely fun? Do you monitor every employee keystroke? Or do you just block the explicit websites and boost morale by giving your staff more freedom? Only you can make important decisions like these.

Set and Communicate Policy
Setting a clear Internet policy on what’s not acceptable to view may not fix everything, but it’s still an important part of the content filtering process. Everything will go much smoother if an employee knows ahead of time what they aren’t allowed to look at, rather than time and time again discovering that the website they were highly anticipating on visiting has been blacklisted. Clear communication channels must be used when communicating your company’s Internet-use policy.

Outsource Your Network Monitoring
Doing content filtering right requires monitoring. This means staying on top of the latest time-wasting websites and adding them to the blacklist. You also have to monitor and block the latest security threats and regularly review your employee’s browsing history. Do you have time for all of this? If you don’t, then you can outsource this responsibility to Network Synergy. With our network monitoring tools, we can remotely take care of all of this monitoring for you. This will free you up to get more work done, which is the point of content filtering.

By being lenient about what happens over your company’s Internet connection, you will end up losing significant amounts of productivity and open up your network to some serious security threats. You can’t afford to take on this kind of risk for the sake of granting access to a few favorite websites. Call Network Synergy today at (203) 261-2201 to take back your Internet.