Several council workers have lost their jobs after spending too much time on eBay and other non-work related websites.
An investigation by Neath Port Talbot Council in South Wales found that some staff had been spending up to two hours a day on online shopping and news sites.
The council allows staff to access non-work related sites during breaks, and only restricts access to certain sites that it deems inappropriate, such as pornography. However, investigators discovered that some staff had been abusing the open access.
“Over the past 18 months, six cases of improper use of the internet have been investigated,” says the council’s head of strategic personnel, Graham Jones. “Of these, two members of staff have resigned, one received a written warning, one was dismissed and investigations are ongoing in the other two cases.”
“The main reason for carrying out the investigations was due to the significant amount of time officers were spending on the internet, and this highlighted an unacceptable level of usage of shopping, entertainment and BBC/Sky related websites,” he adds.
The employers’ union, Unison Wales, has suggested that the council put temptation in the way of the staff by allowing them open access to any sites, and suggested that they should install filtering software to stop any future recurrences.
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