Proposal For Monitoring Employee Use

Employers are discovering that employee emails and telephone uses are starting to have an impact on its business. Therefore, employers are trying to protect the company's investment, by monitoring employees email without being invasive. Employers can use, computer software, which gives the employer the ability to record how much time the employees' spend on his or, her email account, without having to read the employees email

The article states that “There may be a strong case for treating employees like grown-ups, but not everyone may be up to that responsibility. Goldbricking in one form or another has afflicted businesses since at least the days of the Romans. Although employer fears of abuse and diversion of effort are often overblown, anecdotal evidence does indicate that when a company begins monitoring its employee use of the Internet, it will detect some abuse, which will in turn drop off sharply once the initial warnings are issued. Generally, a warning is all that's needed to bring most people within bounds”. Here's where I advocate an open policy. Make it clear to employees just how and when you will be monitoring them, and outline the uses that you will not tolerate and the penalties that will result from such violations. You should work with the human resources department and your company's lawyers to ensure that this policy is enforceable. You should also ensure that the list of prohibited uses is frequently reviewed and easily amendable so that you can react quickly to the PointCasts and Napsters of the future. Activity monitors are tools best used with restraint. For example, I would be very hesitant to install an activity monitor on a machine in a telecommuting worker's home because of the likelihood that other members of your employee's family will use that computer.

Employer monitoring is often seen as an intrusion of privacy for many employees. Companies observe their people in various ways from online usage, social media and emails. Furthermore, organizations now have policies and procedures in place that outline how much accessibility they have to what their staff view and write on company time. The top reasons employers say they monitor is to keep the personnel safe, determine how work is being done and to deter disgruntled employees from giving away company secrets (Mello, 2012).

Our world of technological advances is growing day by day. So much so, in fact, that new laws are created to help determine the legal responsibilities and actions to be taken if an incident occurs. The advantages and disadvantages of monitoring and being monitored will be discussed. Some of the laws that represent the employer and employee as well as why an employer would want to monitor an employee will also are discussed. Although employee monitoring is beneficial to an employer for a variety of reasons, it is better for an employer to leave an employees’ private life away from the workplace private.

Technology is growing and becoming more prevalent in the office today. Almost everything in the office is done on some sort of technology, and using just paper copies is becoming obsolete. As an employee, one needs to be aware he or she is probably being tracked while using company owned devices. Also, employers need to be aware of what is legal to track. With both sides knowing what can be tracked, it can make the workplace a more productive

Slide two introduces the audience to the “whys” behind the behavior of some companies. In other words, slide two provides a good outline detailing reasons why organizations feel the need to monitor employee email and internet usage. Some of the information provided in this slide are: firms can investigate complaints

Many employees are unaware that their employers can monitor what they do online and fire or discipline them based on the information. According to a recent report by the American Management Association, more than a quarter of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail, and about a third have fired workers for misusing the Internet (Snell & Bohlander,

According to the survey of Internet Usage at Work, a quarter of workers spend an hour or more online at sites unrelated to their work, 22% said 30 minutes to an hour was distributed to entertainment. Nearly 10% promised they never did something not relevant to their jobs (Sharma & Jatinder, 2003). Thus, surveillance in workplace can monitor workers’ performance and reduce the waste of time. Furthermore, monitoring employee’s work has a positive effect on work distribution. Surveillance also can achieve the goal of fair work distribution and show how an employee’s performance is evaluated (Mason, Button, Lankshear, Coates, & Sharrock, 2002, cited in Watkins, Coopman, Hart, & Walker, 2007, p. 175). As a result of which, the employee’s enthusiasm is stimulated and the productivity of business will be significantly improved. The opponent argue that excessive monitoring, however, can do harm to employees, because privacy can be compromised if the disclosure of employees’ information was not authorized, and it may cause leak of private information (Ball, 2010). The significance of appropriately managing this issue recently drawn the public’s attention by the brutal cyberattack perpetrated against Sony information in late 2014. Sony employees’ private information was broadcasted to the third party (Ellis, 2014,

Workplace monitoring is a way of keeping an eye on conditions and activities in a workplace such as health, security and business reasons. New technologies have changed the way we do and manage the things in work place during the last decades. Employers can use the information that they collected in a variety of ways and technology allows employers to monitor many aspects of their employee’s workplace activities. Monitoring sometimes violate the employees’ privacy rights, so many types of monitoring are allowed under the law. Sometimes technologies have increased employer risks beyond the production and cost benefits.

Technology has made it easier for companies to track employee emails, phone calls and movements. An article by “The Week,” states that a survey done by the American Management Association, “66 percent of U.S. companies monitor their employees’ internet use, 45 percent log keystrokes, and 43 percent tract employee emails.” The article further states that companies such as Amazon, where employees carry tablets, are used to “record speed and efficiency.” Nurses wear badges to track how often they wash their hands (The rise of workplace spying, 2015).

Computer surveillance refers to the use of computers to track the activity of individuals at the workplace. It is a common practice especially in industries that have a large number of employees whom they cannot monitor in person. The research will examine computer monitoring as one of the methods which the management uses to monitor employee activity at the workplace. The researcher will examine the advantages of computer monitoring at the workplace in detail in relation to the legal realm, public perception and criticism. Firms store most of their data in the computer database. In fact, many companies rely on computer networks to communicate with its employees, stakeholders and clients.

Managers believe that there must be a solution to minimize this issue to increase productivity on the job. Many managers suggest monitoring employees’ online activity to determine to ensure that they doing what is required of their job. There is strong reasons why companies need to monitor their employees’

Chalykoff and Kochan (1989) found in there study of performance monitoring in call centres that there can be positive effects when monitoring employees. There was a positive relationship between job satisfaction and how fast the feedback was given, whether the feedback was positive or not and a clear rating criteria. As previously said, the two main ways for managers to monitor their employees in call centres if through listening in live as the call happens and they can also record the phone call to be reviewed after within a set criteria. (Akroyd et al, 2006). Although the employeees are not always aware that they are being monitored which some could perceive as an invasion of privacy. Despite this both Carayon (1994) and Chalykoff and Kochan (1989) found that there was no link between employees views of monitoring and it being an invasion of privacy but this could be open to more research as there is not much literature on the topic within call centres yet. Due to the nature of work within call centres, it could be argued that a source of the stress on employees comes from emotional labour (Akroyd et al, 2006).

Alder, G. (2001) is a study conducted on electronic performance monitoring using prior research. (Alder, 2001) It suggests that the influence of EPM is strongly based on organizational culture. Organizations use EPM to increase productivity, improve quality and service, reduce costs, avoid legal liability and negative publicity, and guard against security breaches. Critics argue that EPM invades consumer and employee privacy, decreases job satisfaction, increases stress and health issues, diminishes trust, and develops negative work relationships. (Greengard, 1996) (Lewis, 1999, May) (Piturro, 1989)

Employers believe employees are taking advantage of the Internet while at work to access inappropriate websites such as shopping, gambling, pornographic material, and illegal downloading. Therefore, employers are searching for ways to reduce Internet exploring and increase work production, and remain within the state and federal guidelines (Young, 2011). To combat these issues, monitoring technologies are put in place to make employees more productive during company’s work hours. Monitoring technologies are classified as the use of computerized system that automatically collect, store, analyze, and report information about how an employee is performing his/her job (Wen, Schwieger & Gershuny, 2007). This helps companies to track their employee’s Internet movements, obtain detailed information (Wen, Schwieger & Gershuny, 2007), and protect the privacy of their company. In return, employers hope this will limit or eliminate employees from extensive use of the Internet.