It should come as no surprise to you that if you use company computers to read and send X-rated email that you will be fired. That's why it's odd to read that the head of tourism for the state of Hawaii was retained today after the state found x-rated emails in his government account.
In a nutshell, the Hawaii Tourism Authority board of directors, after a seven hour hearing, unanimously agreed to keep Rex Johnson as their president and CEO after a state audit showed he was sending and receiving x-rated emails on the state's dime.
Now he didn't get away unscathed, specifically, his $240,000 salary was cut to $200,000 for this year and his 4 year contract sliced to 1 year. Still, Johnson, who has lead the HTA since 2002 told a local newspaper he was "very happy with the decision."
"I think the punishment is fair," Johnson told the HonoluluAdvisor.com. "I'll never do that again."
Yeah, at least not from the office eh, Rex?
Officially the board said of Johnson: "He has apologized to the board for his misuse of his state laptop and we have accepted his apology but sternly warned that any future infractions will be treated more severely. The board also issued a verbal and written reprimand to Rex," HTA Board Chairman Kelvin Bloom in a statement.
Johnson is a glaring exception in the current corporate culture. A survey that came out earlier this year found that more than a quarter of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and one third have fired workers for misusing the Internet on the job.
The vast majority of bosses who fired workers for Internet misuse - 84% - said the employee was accessing porn or other inappropriate content, according to an IDG News Service story. While looking at inappropriate content is an obvious no-no on company time, simply surfing the Web led to a surprising number of firings. As many as 34% of managers in the study said they let go of workers for excessive personal use of the Internet, according to the study conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute which surveyed 304 US companies.
The story went on to say managers who fired workers for e-mail misuse, 64% did so because the employee violated company policy and 62% said the workers' e-mail contained inappropriate or offensive language. More than a quarter of bosses said they fired workers for excessive personal use of e-mail and 22% said their workers were fired for breaching confidentiality rules in e-mail.
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