This morning one of my coworkers asked if I’d take a look at his computer.  When I asked what was wrong he mentioned it might have gotten wet.  Really?  How did that happen?  Apparently the 2^nd best place behind the fridge to keep a bottle of water is your laptop case (in the same compartment as your laptop itself).  Who knew?  If you don’t tighten the cap to the water bottle bad things can happen.  Like your laptop can get flooded with 16 oz of water and stop working.

Fortunately for my associate most of the water just puddled in the bottom of the bag and his laptop is fine.

Giving your laptop a sip of water when it’s thirsty isn’t covered in our Acceptable Use Policy or our Incident Response Policy or any of the other myriad of forms one has to govern the use of company technology resources.

One of the problems I have faced in the past (aside from sometimes novel uses of one’s computer) is keeping employees aware of those policies.  Generally the read and sign them on their first day and never see them again.

At Achievant we have a feature in our application (which we use internally) that posts news and documents on our HRIS’ home page so that a user logging in gets a brief news update.  Using these creatively we can remind folks of the content of our policies and keep some of the more important ones (like security awareness) forefront in the minds.  It’s a feature that has less star power than time and attendance or learning management, but is one that adds considerable benefit when used effectively.