Work Ethic is the core issue

I agree that your treating the symptom, not the disease here but unfortunately, there are a lot of people in management roles that have little to no incentive to actually deal with the real problems. There are always going to be people at any job who coast and do as they please because there will always be a manager somewhere that will enable the behavior. It's sad but true.

But what is the alternative? Speak with each person in the dept/division/company about the ethics situation and not have something to grade them on? Who grades the grader?

Products such as Websense that monitor and control internet access are a necessity today. Left on their own, employees do not have the discipline to resist the lure of the internet and what an incredible time waster it can be.

Sure, you can try to improve employee's work ethics, but it doesn't work for long - they go back to their old behavior. Its more effective to employ a tool like Websense that will limit the amount of time or at least monitor what they do on the internet. AND - it limits what they can do when they are supposed to be working.

Software tools and policies are the first line of defense against inappropriate internet access. In most cases it does the job without venturing on that very slippery slope of discussing someone's work ethics because they use the internet too much at work.

then why require a special code to make l-d calls, or prohibit l-d telephone calls altogether??? That and reviewing the phone bills keep people from making toll calls from work. we lock doors to keep people out. work ethic cannot be coached.

Fewer and fewer managers seem capable of the most basic management task: setting performance goals and measuring accomplishments against those goals. So they fall back on the kindergarten method: If you don't look like you're working you must be wicked. The extinction of the position of first-line supervisor had a lot to do with this. They passed down genuine supervisorial "people skills" from generation to generation, and the best of them were promoted into management, becoming the gurus of the profession. The workstation revolution that deprived us of our skileld clekrs adn tpyists also removed the people who taught us our people skills. Now we can become managers based on anything BUT supervisory skills. Our superiors don't know whether we can actually do our jobs -- because they can't do theirs. So the only way anybody knows to evaluate their subordinates' performance is to spy on them to see if they are diligent and loyal -- not whether they are skillful and accurate. When the internet debuted it was predicted that by RIGHT NOW most Americans would be working at home. No two-ton SUVs gridlocking our highways, no war in the Mideast over the planet's petroleum reserves, no million-dollar price tags on ordinary homes that happen to be close to a city, no parents who never get to see their children awake, no steady diet of convenience foods. Just an honest 8-hour day on a workstation in your own comfortable chair, looking out over your own peaceful garden, with your stress-reducing pet in your lap, your loving family a few yards away -- and only one job instead of three per two spouses, because the cost of housing, transportation, day care, food, and psychotherapy is so low. The technology for that scenario is available and dirt cheap, but it never happened because we're all being managed by boobs who can't figure out how to tell whether we're getting our jobs done. So in frustration they make us drive to work every day. Not that they can now actually tell whether we're getting our jobs done just by looking at us, but at least they get the satisfaction of yelling at us if they catch us logging on to e-Bay. Now who's the wicked one?