For a start, I want you to send me the porno magazine, so I can study it for clues…
Threatening to fire everyone if one person breaks company policy is a terrible idea, unless you don’t give a shit about how well your employees do their jobs. It basically tells your employees that you’re a terrible manager, and they should start working on their resumes.
If you don’t care that your employees think you’re abritrary and capricious, then go right ahead. But why not just fire them all right now? If your employees believe you’ll fire them for no reason, why would they bother to do their best work? By firing them all right away you’ll be doing them a favor, they can find another job with a boss who acts like a human being.
That’s an understandably point, but I think you can phrase it artfully enough that people may not get that impression. Given that this option was already under discussion, I am guessing these employees know they are somewhat more expendable.
There are PI agencies who specialize in this sort of thing. Up to and including polygraphs.
Me, I’d point out the new cameras to everyone - they’ve been there 2 months, actually;) and interview individually.
Have a burned DVD with anything on it - just so they can see it’s recorded, and lay it on the table.
“Bob, this is a recording of the break room at 2pm Wednesday. It shows someone leaving a porn mag/stealing Lean Cuisines/peeing in the coffee. What do you want to tell me about this?”
Someone will crack.
Either that, or the blue hands thing. Caught Ho-John, ya know.
Note that a polygraph is complete & utter bullshit.
But the mention of it may lead to one person declining to participate.
I think they also may be illegal in some states.
Thanks for all the comments and insight. I guess decimation is out of the question?? 
“Threaten to fire them all” isn’t really an option, though in my intitial reaction that sounded damn good. And while any one could be trained to the position in a few weeks, in the short term really we can’t operate without their work so “fire them all today” isn’t on the table.
As noted above the porn mag is an analogy and not what really happened. I’m not comfortable giving more specifics though. But “one unnamed person did really bad, wrong, non-contractual, untraceable thing in a group area” covers it. Can’t limit access to the area and still have the job performed and because it is a virtual space, cameras won’t work. Key loggers are an interesting idea however.
In the end we are going to do individual conversations and serious group retrainings which will do exactly squat, but is the most appropriate response.
The whole thing sucks because the person who I most suspect I actually quite like as an individual and is outstanding at the job if only they could have a measure of common sense and honor.
I agree with this. How do you know only one person did it? Maybe it was a group activity. If you torture them all into confessing, you can fire them all with a clean conscience… assuming they live through the torture. If they don’t, it’s just another way of solving your problem.
:dubious:Was your original post tongue in cheek then? You really considered firing essential employees that would take weeks at best to replace over someone downloading porn? You sound terrifying to work for, like because someone stole the toilet paper you will now personally observe all bathroom visits. The worst kind of incompetent petty tyrant, shooting off your nose with a shotgun to spite your face.
You need to emotionally disengage from this situation, you are way to invested in enforcing company policy. It seems that for now restating the rules and making everyone aware that the violation was noticed and it is not acceptable will suffice, if it continues you can explore other options. Why does this virtual space require shared anonymous access?
It doesn’t. We don’t know what you consider to be “really bad, wrong”. Without knowing what this offense is, it is not possible to determine what would constitute a proportionate response.
I have to agree with this.
As a boss, you should be concentrating on making it possible for your workers to produce the most work at the highest quality they can – not worrying about their personal moral behavior. Pay attention to the work – that’s your job – and quit titillating yourself about naughty behavior.
I’ve had to work for bosses like you. But only for as long as it took to get a new assignment. Concentrating on trivialities will chase good people away.
Expect more responses like the above, until you are willing to give more info about what the actual offense was. Honestly it doesn’t make any sense why you wouldn’t in the first place.
It’s worth noting that if this is something illegal, you call the police. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the work side of it that you forget about that.
Depends on the “naughty behavior.” If it’s considered to be “contributing to a hostile workplace” then suddenly you find yourself slapped with a sexual harassment suit because you did “nothing” to prevent employees from harassing female coworkers anonymously.
You could consider giving an incentive to confess (and set up safeguards against future transgressions, so you’re not in this position again.) Incentives might include a confession that gets mildly punished vs. what happens if you find out the transgressor’s ID without his/her cooperation. This often works with plagiarism where two or three students have handed in identical work and no one confesses to who copied what from whom. “Just concidence, professor.” Give me a few minutes with each one, though, and I’ll sort out the story–I’ll tell each one that they will all fail the course if I don’t get a better answer (and I will fail them all), but that if I hear a more plausible story from someone, that person will receive a lighter punishment. More plausible versions soon ensue.
What if you get three different but more plausible stories? What if you get three confessions? If you offer what amounts to immunity (or close to it) for a confession, without the alternative being the worst possible punishment for all, any rational person would confess whether they did it or not.
True, but it rarely works out that way. In any case, I’m no worse off than “Just coincidence, professor.”
Also, there’s always the rubber hose.
I’ve already spoken out in favor of torture, so we agree on that. 
Still, your example isn’t particularly relevant to the OP, because in your example ALL the parties are most likely guilty, including the one who actually wrote the paper and then let fellow students copy it. So threatening and even punishing them all is a much more reasonable proposition that doing the same in the OP’s case.
Without more information, the OP’s response to this scenario seems unnecessarily petty and short-sighted.
Assuming that the incident is, or is equivalent to some unknown individual leaving a porno magazine in the break room. Maybe it is a “fireable offense”, but is it really worth being short-staffed and then having to go out and hire a replacement?
There is ZERO incentive for anyone to come forward and confess and little you can do to force the issue.
As a manager, the only thing you can do is inform everyone of the “seriousness” of this incident and then have HR give them a sensitivity training course.