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According to Reuters, the employees are understood to have downloaded "inappropriate material." A total of 60 permanent and 90 contract staff at the company's offices across the UK and Ireland have been suspended. However, Una Tempany, marketing and communications manager for HP Ireland, said that the issue primarily affected HP's UK offices, rather than its Irish operations.
The company said the violations were not criminal in nature but broke its rules. "As well as protecting its reputation, as a large employer HP has a responsibility to protect its people from offensive material and takes any abuse of its policy very seriously," HP said in a statement.
The issue of pornography at work continues to exist, despite the consequences employees face for such misconduct. Although there are no figures for Ireland, a new survey conducted by Websense International and Personnel Today magazine found that three-quarters of the UK companies participating in a survey say they have dismissed employees for Internet misconduct, often for on-line pornography.
Websense's survey found that 72 percent of the firms had dealt with Internet misuse in the workplace and that 69 percent of all such related dismissals were associated with on-line pornography. The study reported on the responses of 544 human resources managers and officers who worked for UK corporations employing an average of 2,500 employees each.
Meanwhile other recent research suggests that 70 percent of all Internet pornography traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday, according to IT security firm Entropy. One in eight men have admitted to looking at or downloading adult material over the Internet during work hours.
And in some instances employees are unaware that their e-mail is being monitored. A recent report by Amarach Consulting found that almost 40 percent of Irish workers accessing the Internet in work have said their use of it is monitored by their employers, but nearly ten percent are unsure.
According to Bettina MacCarvill, senior consultant at Amarach, this means that many employers are not being up-front about their monitoring activities and do not have formal policies and procedures in place. "This cloak and dagger approach probably serves employers quite well," commented MacCarvill. "Employees are less likely to waste time on-line if they suspect their activity is being monitored."
This kind of activity is partly because employers are also becoming more sensitive to the fact that a pornography scandal could hurt their businesses. Gardai recently raided a number of businesses in relation to suspected child pornography and one of those businesses was named in the national press.
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