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 When I speak about human policies, I refer to written or oral agreements, rules, regulations, etcetera, that act as codes of conduct. When it comes to computers, these are the hardest to control. Many companies already have such policies in place, disallowing users to spend time on personal projects, phone calls or emails. Taking a good look at these policies will reveal in many cases that many employees are not keeping them. The only way of 'enforcing' these policies, is performing regular checks or audits and having a penalty system in place in case a violation is noticed.

People must be made aware by written -and preferably signed- policies, that they are responsible for the tools of their trade. When you have a desk-job, a computer is as much a tool of YOUR trade as a hammer and saw are for a carpenter.

Having the tools available is one thing, but knowing how to use them is something totally different. Many companies give employees access to computers and software without checking the knowledge of the user first.

Imagine the carpenter example from above: When this carpenter works for a company and the company makes a wood saw available to him, it is expected of him that he does not cut his own hand off. But when he comes back the next day, asking for a new saw, because he has been cutting iron bars with it, it is obvious that he will be reprimanded. When using power tools, the carpenter needs to make sure that his tools are in working condition and perform some regular, basic maintenance on them like cleaning dust and dirt to avoid the tool from jamming up. While in the carpenter's business this is considered common sense and is expected from the worker, somehow this common sense seems not to apply to the computer users.

I always recommend the following when discussing human policies with business owners:

• First of all, make sure that users reboot their machine before they call the helpdesk. Rebooting -especially with Windows- seems to solve 90% of all problems. Users tend to leave the computer running for days - if not weeks - at a time, which can lead to all sorts of weird behavior.

• Users should be committed to performing simple maintenance on their computers. Similar to a cluttered desk, a cluttered desktop will cut down productivity. Setting up a proper folder structure for storage of documents and keeping this folder structure clean by archiving or deleting obsolete documents, saves a lot of headache.

• Similar to the desktop, an ofter overlooked issue is cleaning up email. Using a separate archive in which old or obsolete items are dropped, keeps the email client running smoothly. As an added bonus, the strain on the email server will be limited. Having a couple of users that do not clean up their email boxes and let them grow out of hand, often causes other users of the same server to experience delays or failures...

• Get over cute stuff! All those nice and cute interface enhancements, backgrounds, mouse cursors and themes need to be loaded into memory, processed by the processor and/or video card and therefore use system resources. This too is known to cause stability issues on business machines.

• Toolbars and 'helper apps' should be either standardized or banned all together. Many of these applications link into a web browser and contain some form of 'phone-home' functionality with external parties. I am not even talking about spyware, which is included in about 90% of all toolbars and helper apps.

• Make people save their work and turn their computers off at night. Besides the energy saving for computers that are idling for 12 hours per day, there will be no interference on backups due to files that are still considered to be 'in use'.

There are many more issues with 'additional software and customizations', so try to keep business machines 'all business'. Disallow users to install software that is not directly business related and have a good reprimand system in place, which includes taking away computer privileges all together for a specified time.

Remind the users that they cannot be productive when their computer privileges are revoked, and that they have to find an other way of earning their paycheck if they cannot use their computer.

While this may seem to be drastic at first glance, remember that:

1. Computers are tools that are indispensable to keep your business going.

2. Users tend to allow themselves to be lazy and dependent when it comes to computers.

3. Computers are linked together in a network, so everything that users do can impact all others!

4. Computer maintenance is expensive enough as it is. Especially server maintenance. When users are forced to clean up after themselves instead of relying on an third party, money and time are easily saved.