Impressed or not?

Many folks these days are letting their old Web site do the job of making a first impression, and that can be a bad idea.

If your site’s old, outdated or one that you had slapped together a while ago, it might be a good time to revisit it now with a critical eye.

With the economy slumping and costs rising, a strong Web presence will be more important than ever. And your audience won’t be impressed with a down-market design that doesn’t convey your firm’s “branding” — that look and feel that tells the audience who you are and why you matter.

Branding your organization with an impressive Web presence doesn’t have to be costly or complicated. But it’s a good idea to stick to some basic principles.

Here are a few guidelines from the folks at entrepreneur.com:

1. Keep it simple and clean up the clutter. (Think Apple, the master of simplicity in branding.)
2. Create or ask your site designer for a clean, well-balanced graphic design.
3. Use one or two basic colors that go well together, not a hodgepodge.
4. Choose one font and stick with it. You can express almost anything by using variations within a single font family: size, weight (boldness), italics, etc. If you really must, choose a second font for major headlines. But first try it with one font.
5. Coordinate a single look–design, colors, etc.–across everything you do, including your logo, website, brochures, ads and signage.

The bottom line: Don’t focus on all the bells and whistles. Be sure the site works well, conveys your most important messages and is kept up to date. This could be your first chance to make a lasting impression. Get it right.

Have you seen sites that you thought were impressive and useful? Let us know what they are.

Jeffrey Spanierman was non-tenured high school teacher in Ansonia, Connecticut — until he was fired because of his MySpace page.

He said he created the page to communicate with students outside of school and build a better relationship with them. But parents and school officials weren’t too pleased when they saw what was on the site.

The profile, in which Spanierman called himself “Mr. Spiderman,” contained nude photos of men, foul language and inappropriate conversations with students (including one about whether a student was “getting any,” presumably referring to sex).

The school ordered him to take the profile down. He did, but then put an identical page up shortly after and was promptly fired.

Spanierman sued, claiming his right to free speech was violated. But the court ruled in the employer’s favor. The MySpace page was clearly inappropriate and raised doubts about his ability to do his job. Therefore, the school made the right choice when it fired him.

Can MySpace get someone fired?

Can employers terminate workers based on their online activities? It’s a complicated question and one that has yet to be fully tested in court.

Things get tricky with public employers, who are subject to First Amendment restricts. Also, some states have laws against terminating workers for off-duty conduct.

But as this case shows, what makes it onto the Web can end up being job related. Other employees have been fired after bragging online about stealing or lying about skipping work. Some employers have let people go out of fear that a worker’s stupidity could damage the company’s reputation.

In those situations, employers shouldn’t expect any legal trouble.

What has your experience been? Have you or another manager come across an employee’s online profile? Ever fired anyone because of it? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Cite: Spanierman v. Hughes

Three problems companies have heard complaints about:

1. Harassment

In some cases, employees have been caught snapping pictures of female co-workers and distributing them around the office. That’s an obvious harassment issue that must be dealt with swiftly if complaints are made, or the conduct is discovered by manager.

Lawyers also warn about services that deliver pornography straight to a user’s cell phone. Courts have ruled that the presence of porn in the workplace can be enough to constitute a hostile work environment in violation of the law.

2. Privacy

Recently, two employees at a New Mexico hospital were fired after they snapped pictures of patients on their camera phones and posted them on the Internet.

Similar situations have been reported at other hospitals, as well as other types of businesses.

3. Data security

One way rogue employees and other hackers steal confidential data about companies, employees and customers is to steal the electronic files.

But when security controls make that impossible, another method is to just snap a picture of the desired information. Make sure confidential papers are locked up and electronic files are password-protected.

Looks like the big winners in IT will be e-discovery providers. The folks who’ll be helping the big finance firms sort through years of e-mail, text and instant messages, databases and spreadsheets for evidence to be used in the avalanche of litigation that’s sure to follow the collapse of many of the country’s big investment firms and banks.

The big e-discovery firms like Seagate, Symantec, Clearwell Systems and LexisNexis along with some of the smaller vendors stand to be pretty busy in the coming months as the ripple effects of the Wall Street debacle play out.

These discovery players preach the gospel of “proactive” data management to firms, making the case that policies, procedures and a well-thought-out structure will save boatloads of time — which in the e-discovery business is really and truly money.

Organizations that haven’t thought ahead can be out millions of dollars if lawyers come calling and insist on combing through an organization’s unstructured, chaotic databases.

E-discovery vendors will tell you that a few dollars spent on prevention can well be worth the cure of having to find electronic evidence the court wants to see.

That’s what recently happened to one company.

Just before Thanksgiving last year, Priyavrat Patel was fired from his job as a systems administrator for Pratt-Read, a Connecticut-based tool manufacturer.

Rather than leave quietly, he decided to use his knowledge of the company’s computer system to wreak havoc.

Over the holiday weekend, Patel accessed the company’s servers from home and deleted critical files. Employees had no access to the network for about two weeks.

The company filed criminal charges against Patel, who was recently sentenced to six months in prison and a $120,000 fine.

In court, he claimed he was only trying to cause a “small hiccup” that would disrupt operations for a few hours.

The lesson: IT departments need to make sure they change access restrictions following staffing changes to make sure ex-employees can’t get into the network.

In one of the biggest settlements of its kind, Virginia-based Globalcynex, Inc. has agreed to pay $1.7 million to 343 employees.

The employees came to the U.S. through the H-1B visa program, which gives work visas to skilled professionals, mostly IT employees. They claim Globalcynex failed to properly pay them for all hours worked.

The DOL announced that this type of case is a priority, because the department wants to be sure employers don’t try to skirt around labor laws by hiring foreign workers and thinking they can get away with legal violations.

Now’s a good time to caution supervisors and HR about being too quick to classify IT networking staffers as exempt from overtime under the FLSA.

It’s not a cost-cutting strategy — it could be an extremely expensive misstep out of compliance.

Apple is currently staring down the prospect of a major overtime-related lawsuit because of those very claims.

Former employee David Walsh claims he and several other staffers were misclassified as exempt so they wouldn’t get OT and weren’t paid for compensable on-call time.

According to Walsh, the company changed job titles to make positions sound exempt — for example, some people were known as “Senior Network Engineers” even though they did the same work as plain-old Network Engineers.

To stay compliant, companies need to look past job titles to what employees actually do on a day-to-day basis before classifying them.

What ‘computer employees’ are exempt?

Another common mistake that trips a lot of companies up: assuming that any job involving a computer is exempt from OT.

The Fair Labor Standards Act does contain a “computer employee” exempt, but it’s very narrowly defined. The ruled only covers employees who earn a salary of at least $455 per week (or if they’re paid hourly, at least $27.63 per hour):

• apply “systems analysis techniques and procedures,” such as consulting with users to determine hardware or software needs
• design, develop, create, test or modify computer programs based on user design specifications
• design, develop, create, test or modify programs related to operating systems, or
• perform a combination of those duties that requires the same level of skill.

Some examples of employees who probably don’t qualify for the exemption: employees who repair hardware and help desk professionals whose only job is to fix users’ problems.

Note: IT employees who don’t meet the requirements for the computer professional exemption may still be exempt, based on the FLSA’s administrative, executive or professional exemptions.

The reason: Make passwords more complex and thus, more secure.

Before those final tax payments of the year come due, it’s a good time to make sure your company’s key still unlocks the door.

The feds recommended a company change its password “as soon as convenient” after the new requirements were released.

If that didn’t happen — or your company is just starting to use EFTPS — here’s what your password must look like from now on:

1. It must be between eight and 12 characters long.
2. It must contain at least one of each of the following:

• Uppercase alpha (A, B, C, etc.)
• Lowercase alpha (a, b, c, etc.)
• Numeric (1,2,3) or thes special characters (!, @, #, $, *, +, -)

For more information, visit here.

The search giant recently announced it’s adding voice and video chat to its Gmail messaging and collaboration set up.

Users who have a Webcam just need to download a free plug-in to use the app.

This new addition make Gmail much more enterprise friendly and ready for prime time use.

This new feature is being rolled out to Gmail and broader Google Apps users over the next day or two on PCs and Macs. PC users have to have Windows XP or a more recent MS operating system to use the plug in; Mac users will need an Intel-based machine that’s running OS X v. 10.4 for later.

The feature works in browsers that support the latest version of Gmail, including Google Chrome, Firefox 2.0 and higher, Internet Explorer 7.0, and Safari 3.0.

You can get the plug in by clicking here.

India’s big outsourcing firms are reporting a steep decline in revenue forecasts, and they’re also putting the brakes on hiring workers. This spells opportunity for U.S. companies looking to strike deals with these firms — the tighter things get for them, the more likely they’ll be to offer better contract terms and conditions.

And while the economic downturn in the U.S. may have companies looking to outsourcing as a way to trim costs, which may drive up demand for India’s high tech services, these Asian companies are reportedly a bit jittery about the election of Barack Obama as president.

They apparently fear he will encourage policies that make outsourcing a less attractive option and favor the hiring of American workers instead.

That coupled with Obama’s promise to invest heavily in technology development, training and resources could encourage American companies to keep their tech dollars in the United States, rather than spend them with overseas firms.