At my company in Colorado I have reason to believe that an employee has been wasting countless hours working on his personal website while on the clock. Now, we’re all guilty of surfing the net while at work but there has been a complete lack of production on his part. Yet, his website looks fantastic.
To get to my GQ: Is there a way to find out what time a website was registered? I did a whois search and it just comes up with the date. I just need proof that it was when he was on the clock.
How would I go about finding out this info?
Further, how about updates? Is there a way to find out when and exactly what time a website was updated/published?
Other than a subpoena, of course. I’m trying not to get legal sources involved… It wouldn’t result in a firing of the employee, just a warning. However, it is serious enough to look into.
Just look art your own company’s server logs. You should be able to tell if he has been connecting to his web site from work, and for how long. You should also be able to tell if he’s been FTPing files to his site.
Simple answer: to my knowledge, there’s no particular way of guaranteeing to find out the timestamp.
The only way I can think of is if he’s using a content management system that puts a timestamp into the header of the HTML, but not only is that unlikely, you have no way of telling whether the timestamp is accurate or not.
(I’m slightly loath to contribute, because I’m a terrible transgressor; that said, I work long hours and am extremely productive, despite messing around.)
But couldn’t your IT department give you the logs of what he’s looking at? That’s the normal way to bust someone for such a thing.
We don’t have an IT dept. The reason I want the time is because I let my employees bring their laptops to work so their work is a little more comfortable.
I don’t want to be a whistleblower if he had done this on break or if he had a half-day of work which is why I’m wondering about the time.
[QUOTE=SweetHomeColorado]
there has been a complete lack of production on his part.[/QUOTE}Give him the warning over this, and forget about the web stuff.
As the employer, you are entitled to set productivity standards, and discipline or fire employees who don’t produce. So stick to that, and don’t be distracted by whatever else he is wasting his time on.
The minute you bring this web stuff up to him, you’ll face comments like ‘other employees spend time online, too’ and ‘I’m not online as much as you are saying’ – then you are distracted into discussing what other employees are doing, or trying to prove what he does online and how much time he spends (which is what you’re already spending time doing). Avoid all this by keeping the issue strictly focused on his job, and his productivity at it, and don’t get into these side issues. That’s a much cleaner way to deal with this problem.
[QUOTE=SweetHomeColorado]
there has been a complete lack of production on his part.
[/QUOTE}Give him the warning over this, and forget about the web stuff.
As the employer, you are entitled to set productivity standards, and discipline or fire employees who don’t produce. So stick to that, and don’t be distracted by whatever else he is wasting his time on.
The minute you bring this web stuff up to him, you’ll face comments like ‘other employees spend time online, too’ and ‘I’m not online as much as you are saying’ – then you are distracted into discussing what other employees are doing, or trying to prove what he does online and how much time he spends (which is what you’re already spending time doing). Avoid all this by keeping the issue strictly focused on his job, and his productivity at it, and don’t get into these side issues. That’s a much cleaner way to deal with this problem.[/QUOTE]
This is a GQ, there are many details which I kept out. I wanted to give a background for the sake of letting people know why, not asking other ways to deal with this problem or how to manage.
I have been doing just fine with productivity and the business. There is much more to the story, but frankly, the details aren’t relavent to the question:
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Can I, (and if I can, how) find out the specific time a website was registered or updated?**
Short of legally forcing the domain registrar to provide such information, if they keep such records at all, the answer is no, especially since you have no IT dept.
t-bonham@scc.net makes a good point. Unless you have a written policy in effect before the fact, the employee can claim others are using company time for personal Internet use. You will have to find some other way to assess the person’s productivity.
So this means your employees are able to use their own computers at your place of employment? Is this a courtesy on your part or that you cannot afford to provide company computers for them?
Sounds like you’re confusing domain registration with site maintenance. It’s true that there are public records available on some registrars that will tell you when someone registered a domain, but that’s a poor way to go about this (there is no time of day indicated, and if there was, it would probably not reflect when the request itelf was made).
What it really sounds like you’re after is information about when he is accessing his site for maintenance, and this has nothing to do with domain registration. There is no guaranteed way to do this, because in terms of his relationship with his webhost, he is entitled to privacy regarding his access times and other account details. Similarly, you wouldn’t be able to get information from his credit card company or his bank about the times he’s made certain transactions, even if you suspect him of not working.
That being said, you might be able to figure things out by snooping around his site and looking for timestamps (blog entries, “page last modified” stamps, etc). Or, just keep tabs on the site and note if it changes when he’s at work, I guess. But bear in mind that there is absolutely no way to corroborate this in a provable way. If he claims that a friend of his has access to his site and is helping him out, you won’t have any actual proof that it’s not true (and it’s not even a particularly outrageous claim – plenty of people get help with design or layout issues from other people).
So: no. There is no way for you to get what you want, without tracking his internet access locally.
This is exactly why most companies have controlled internet access, even if it’s just firewall logs. Otherwise, you have an unmonitored communications channel that is impossible to audit, and this is one of the more benign examples of why this is bad.
That response is a GQ response I am looking for. Thank you.
Completely un-related to the question. Especially since this is GQ.
However, to address these commecnts:
written policy in place: Yes
Productivity: Clear set goals put in place with deadlines to get the work done. The work has not been done. Hence, the productivity is not sufficient. The goals are clear and set before the task is asked of the person. The person then can either choose to take the task as-is, talk and negotiate with us about additional time needed if they feel it is an unrealistic deadline. We are generally flexible unless the request is extremely realistic. We also give them open-door follow-ups where they can let us know if they need additional time to finish something. At this time we can make the necessary calls to clients to see if we can do anything so that they aren’t pushing themselves at midnight the night before the project is due and giving 50% results opposed to a few extra days and 100% production and results. We encourage common sense. (eg. weigh it out. Don’t approach us an hour before if it is foreseeable a week in advance that you are behind.)
Like I said, there is a lot to it.
Finally, I’m not sure if that comment was intended to be a stab or a shot at my style of managing. If you read above, I had previously stated that this is a convienence for the employees. I’ve noticed people tend to work better when they are familiar with the computers they are working with. If we need a graphic design and can provide only a certain program but the person has a different program they are more familiar with than the one we can provide, and that program is on their laptop, then why not encourage them to use it?
We HAVE desktops for use. We have all the programs needed to succeed, but in respect for the comfort and familarity with one’s personal computer, we allow them to use it as long as they get the work done. My personal approach is to trust everyone until they give you a reason not to.so by no means is this a matter of not being able to (or willing to) provide computers.
With that said, I think this thread can be closed. I gather there is no way to find out this information which I’m looking for.
Just for the sake of GQ’s general well being, I want to suggest that I don’t see anything wrong with posters offering alternate solutions to a problem posited in an OP, even if they don’t strictly address the specific question asked. Personally I very much appreciate any sort of help I can get when I come to GQ for answers, and just because you didn’t find one particular answer helpful doesn’t outweigh the benefits of this type of problem-solving.
Example - GQ: “I want to make a giant cosmic death-ray controlled by satellites that I may use to destroy my enemies. Is this possible?”
Answer: “Yes, but it would probably be easier to just shoot them.”
