Every business large and small should create an accetable use policy. An acceptable us policy tells employees exactly what they can and cannot do with company computers and other company IT resources.

First when creating an acceptable use policy you want to make it perfectly clear what an employee is allowed and not allowed to do on company computers. Start be creating a list of these items that you will reference when writing the actual policy. Examples include appropiate and inappropaite websites.
Now that we have our lists we need to organize how the policy is written. Start by writting the purpose of the poilcy explaining what you want to accomplish with the policy. The scope of the policy can also be included in this section or can have it’s own section if needed. The scope with the policy will explain exactly who this policy will apply to.

Next is the fun part to actually write the policies that everyone will have to follow. What you will do here is basically bullet point all of the DO’s and DONT’s that we listed above in the beginning. This will normally be the longest section of the entire policy.

The last section you can create in this policy which is normally included at the end. This is the definitions section of the policy. Here you will simply define any words that were used in the policy that the average user would not understand. This section is simply so some cannot use the “I didn’t understand what that meant” card if they ever go against the acceptable use policy.

All acceptable use policies should be signed by every employee that uses a computer or other technology resource or could possibly use those at some point in there job. For a small company this would be pretty simple to simply bring yor policy around the company and have everyone sign it. Larger companies can be a little harder to have all employees sign the acceptable use policy.
Creative ideas can always help get employees together so that they can sign the acceptable use policy. Some companies have manual check signings that require all employees to sign for there pay check once a year just the confirm that all of there information is still current. This is the perfect time to have all employees sign the acceptable use policy. Another creative idea would be to through a work party where the cost of admission is to read over and sign the acceptable use policy. Use your imagination to come up with other ways to get employees together to sign the acceptable use policy.

That is pretty much is in reguards to writing an acceptable use policy.

Thanks For Reading!

If you have any questions or comments about this article please feel free to email me at mwalton@mikenetpc.com