Employee monitoring at work

Outline:

Evolution of employee monitoring Why do employers monitor their employees? Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring Types of employee monitoring New way of monitoring Successful implementation of the monitoring system The Law Monitoring shouldnt go too far My perspective conclusion

Evolution of employee monitoring For many years, organizations have engaged in many practices in order to monitor their employees for the intention of control and compliance, employers also need to be sure that their staff are behaving properly because they are liable for the actions of their employees. Employee monitoring is the act of watching and monitoring employees actions during working hours using employer equipment/property. In the past, the practices of monitoring the employees during their jobs were done manually and required self-reporting for tracking the employees' productivity and performance, but with the developing of technology and the increased number of automated activity in the workplace, many of theses technologies were automated to enhance the tracking and monitoring capability in order to improve the employee's performance of the job. These advancements have generated practices and policies which leveraged the new electronic monitoring capabilities and led to the gathering of vast amounts of information about employees.

Monitoring the employees at work has created an ongoing fight between the employees and their employers; the main thing that they have fought about is computer and email monitoring. These tools

provided the employers with many ways for capturing the employee's performance and conducting surveillance. As result of the continuous possibilities in monitoring, anxiety in employees increase, which in most cases leads to illnesses. Studies indicate that employees who are constantly being monitored at work suffer from inevitable effects, the majority being illnesses such as physical, emotional, and mental disorders

Why do employers monitor their employees? Some of the main reasons by firms for using employee monitoring tools include legal compliance and liability, performance review, productivity management, and security concerns. Most employees have access to a variety of hi-tech tools such as email, the internet, mobile phones and PDAs to help them with their work. Employers need to be sure that these ways of working do not give rise to additional liabilities for example; some employers have found themselves liable for claims of sexual harassment, breaching the company's security, leaking the confidential business information or for employers to become the victim or perpetrator of fraud because of the irresponsible acts of their staff. Some companies monitor employees by tracking keystrokes, reviewing computer files, and reading email and so to ensure they're staying loyal. Press leaks of confidential information and trade secrets are of reasonable concern to employers, and many will go too far to make sure that their employees aren't using company computers to pass on information to outside sources.

The employers always say "Your computer is not a PC but a BC which is a business computer". Therefore, they have a right to review how it's being used by his/her employee. Everybody still remembers the rude e-mail sent to a Norton Rose lawyer from his girlfriend, which was forwarded to six colleagues and ended up being distributed worldwide. Mobile phone network operator Orange fired 40 members of their staff for distribution of inappropriate material, stockbrokers Merrill Lynch dismissed 15 employees for sending offensive material on its system and in 2002 Hewlett Packard fired two and suspended a further 150 for viewing and sharing inappropriate material. All of these cases indicate the importance of monitoring the employees in order for the company to manage their employees' activities and identify any unappreciated behaviors.

In April by Elron Software of Burlington, Massachusetts, made a survey and found that one in three corporate workers said they spent 25 minutes or longer each day at work using the Internet for personal business e.g. shopping and chatting. And almost one in five of the 576 employees questioned said that they are receiving offensive e-mail per month from a co-worker. These are another reasons why the employer considering to monitor their employee.

Techniques and practices of electronic monitoring range from recording and reviewing emails, phone messages and internet browsing to tracking employee attendance, interactions with customers and quality of work. Concerns about electronic monitoring fluctuate between issues of stress and employee satisfaction, these resulting from performance and productivity practices and infringement of privacy rights within the workplace as a consequence of surveillance and tracking of personal communications at work. There is still a need, however, for privacy in the workplace. More than ever before, high performance workplaces in the knowledge age need to provide workers with opportunities for both privacy and interaction. Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring As technology advances, so do the monitoring possibilities in the workplace; as a result these possibilities will raise the privacy issue in the workplace. Nowadays, employers can monitor and track many aspects of their employees' jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are using the Internet. There are no laws to prevent these monitoring, so the employer may listen, watch and read most of the employee's workplace communications unless company policy specifically states otherwise. Employee's privacy issues take place in many areas of the work environment. Thanks to current technology, the ability to spy on employees and/or customers is cheap, easy, and available all the time. Each telephone call made by the employee can be monitored, other employers record the time each employee spends on bathroom breaks. Software can be installed on each employee's computer in order to track his/her email, the visited website and so on. Employees believe that an employer has no business in snooping into their private life, even if they were under their supervision at work. Many others believe that employers dont have any excuse to monitor, because they can have their ISP set up automatic blocks on the internet before employees even get to use it. Many arguments have arisen about how far an employer can go in order to monitor the employee at work. An employer will see it as a way to guarantee more effective work, where an employee may see it as an invasion of their privacy and right. It is true that there is no law that prevent any company from monitoring their employees, but the fact that employee monitoring is legal does not automatically make it right. An employees right to privacy is often raised with practices that capture and record employee communications which can be both business and personal. From an ethical point of view, an employee shouldnt give up all of his or her privacy when entering the workplace. It is reasonable that employees often feel as if their rights were violated when they are at work e.g. personal e-mail was intercepted or read without their permission. However, many employers feel that by reading e-mail, they may be able to prevent personal use or abuse of company resources, employee theft, and/or espionage. However, employees see this issue in different way; they feel that if an e-mail is addressed to their name, no one else has the right to read it. Ethical issues arise regarding the right to privacy; legislation is trying to resolve such issues, but the debate rages on. Many companies still intercept e-mail and voice mail, based on legislation that states "let the employer be fair; let the employee be aware", that if an organization gives prior consent, they protect themselves against the risk of liability, by notifying employees their e-mails may be read.

Types of employee monitoring As mentioned earlier organization can use many ways to monitor their employee at work, the most common types of monitoring are the following: Telephone Monitoring: Call monitoring is "listening to live phone calls and recording one's observations (Richly, 1996)." The employers can monitor any call that has been made or received by the employee on any telecommunication equipment even by the mobile phone. E-mail monitoring: The employers can monitor and record each email that has been sent or received by the employee. Internet monitoring: Monitoring and recording the employee's web activities, the employer can know which site the employee has visited and the amount of time he/she spent there. Video monitoring: Monitoring the employee's work activities and behaviors through video recording devices and closed circuit TV system (CCTV) or any recording devices. "Employers may use video surveillance cameras to monitor the workplace in areas where employees have no reasonable expectation of privacy (Turk, 1996)." Computer monitoring: "Computer-based monitoring is the use of computerized systems to automatically collect information about how an employee is performing his or her job (George, 1996)." Employers can observe what is on the screen or stored in the employees' computer terminals and hard disks, they can keep track of the amount of time an employee spends away from the computer. Some companies use these S/W to track the number of mistakes an employee makes on the keypad, the speed of their typing, the accuracy of the typing and the number of jobs they are performing at once The American Management Association survey showed that forty-five percent of large and mid-sized companies in the year of 1999, "record and review their employees' communications and activities on the job, including phone calls, e-mail and computer files".

The most common type of monitoring that is used nowadays is through emails. Employers are faced with the many potential problems caused by employees use of e-mail at the workplace. The main reasons for monitoring the employee's email are for preventing and discouraging sexual or other illegal workplace harassment, preventing "cyber stalking" by employees, preventing employee disclosure of trade secrets and other confidential information and maintaining the company's professional reputation and image.

New way of monitoring Googling employees -both before and after hiring- are done by most of the companies in order to get the scoop on their lives. The employee's address, hobbies, credit reports, and criminal history can all be

found online. Moreover, according to the 2007 AMA survey, 12 percent of companies monitor the blogosphere "blogs and their interconnections", to know what is being written about the company. Furthermore, another 10 percent monitor social-networking sites such as facebook and my space. These techniques are becoming popular in helping to track employees. Logically, no one should post anything anywhere on the Internet that wouldn't want his/her boss to see. Successful implementation of the monitoring system To have a suitable balance between an employer's need to protect the business and an employee's need to not feel paranoid about privacy at work, companies should develop policies related to email and computer use at work so the companies can implement these tools successfully without any dispute. These Policies put in the picture the proper use of the company-owned systems including email, the Internet, instant messaging and telephone calls. They should also notify the employees that they are being monitored, what type of monitoring is being done and how data from monitoring will be used; the employee must read these policies before accepting the job. The policy should state that the company e-mail and the Internet should only be used for company reasons. Also, it should state that the employees' activity could be monitored at anytime, this way an employee will be aware that their private lives should stay out of the workplace. Another guideline that should be implemented is letting the employees have access to any information found on them through the monitoring system because if a company is going to discipline based on the monitoring system; the employee should have the right to see exactly what they did wrong. Next, a company should state in its policy that any type of information found on the Internet or sent through the e-mail should be of taste and not biased, racist or offensive, if an employee found useful information on the Internet that could improve his or her performance then it must maintain ethical and professional standards. At last, a company should make sure that each employee signs a policy informing the company that they are aware of the monitoring guidelines, policies, and procedures.

The Law Mainly employee monitoring is completely legal. Delaware and Connecticut are the only states that demand the employers to inform employees of monitoring. But most employers do (and should) make a point of alerting employees to surveillance, in order to avoid the fuzzy legal and ethical boundaries surrounding electronic privacy in the workplace. The employers who monitor their employees was being questioned, 83 percent said they inform them that they're doing it.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 , is the only Federal Law that addresses the issue of workplace privacy, "The ECPA prohibits (1) unauthorized and intentional 'interception' of wire, oral, and electronic communications during the transmission phase, and (2) unauthorized 'accessing' of electronically stored wire or electronic communications (Pivec and Brinkerhoff, 1999)." Email is considered an electronic communication.

The employers can take advantages of two exceptions in the ECPA. The first exception is called the system provider exception. It states that this law does not apply to the providers of the electronic communication service "if the interception occurs during an activity necessary to the rendition of the service or to the protection of the rights or property of the provider (Pivec and Brinkerhoff, 1999)." Because employers own the communication service, then legally they have the right to monitor it. There is also a consent exception clause that states, "An employer may intercept electronic communications if the prior consent of one of the parties to the communication has been obtained (Pivec and Brinkerhoff, 1999)." Many employers have their employees sign agreements on the policies of monitoring ensuring that they will be covered under this law. The only limit to employer surveillance comes from the (ECPA), a federal law passed in 1986. The ECPA prohibits employers from intentionally eavesdropping on purely personal conversations that an employee may have at work. It does not, however, prevent employers from listening in on business-related conversations or monitoring electronic communications such as email and instant messaging.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution also implies the right-to-privacy laws. Employers can monitor their employees if it is based on "reasonable suspicion" or "legitimate business needs" (Barsook and Roemer, 1998). Monitoring shouldnt go to far Just because the law allows the employers to monitor their employees; it doesn't mean that they should do it all the time. In many cases, monitoring can go too far, no one wants to feel like they are being watched all the time. This can create paranoia, mistrust and uncomfortable working conditions. Employers, therefore, should be able to justify any such monitoring as protecting legitimate business interests. The employers should monitor the employees' activities within the workplace boundaries, any activity outside the workplace shouldnt concern the employer unless if it will affect the employee work.

My perspective I believe that the employer has the right to protect his/her business interests to ensure that every process in the work is done effectively, and since all of the work is done by the help of the employees, the employer need to make sure that these employees are doing their jobs in the best way. However, when deciding to monitor an employees activities at work, a balance between the employeess right to privacy and the business needs of the employer must be implemented. As mentioned earlier, the company must create a policy concerning the employee's monitoring system. Once a policy is created, companies should distribute and communicate it to all employees and require them to sign an acknowledgement that they have received, read, understood and agreed to abide by the rules. Some of the employees dont feel comfortable with the thought of being monitored, they think if they are doing

their job effectively and they are following the rules so there is no need for monitoring their activities. They believe that as long as they are not doing something wrong, the employers have no right for invading their privacy by monitoring them. But I believe that they are wrong, the employers has the right to make sure that the business is done effectively and in the right way, so monitoring the employees is the best way for that but a balance must be there. It's possible, however, for employers to enforce their electronic communications policies without intruding into their employees' lives. If, for example, a company will prohibit its staff from visiting sex and pornographic sites, but will permit their surfing travel, financial and sports sites for a maximum of 15 minutes during breaks, that company can use software to limit workers' activities to just those sites within the allowed time frame. Similarly, technology exist that enables an employer to determine whether a worker is sending and receiving email from other than professional contacts without actually reading the e-mails.

Conclusion At the very least, Monitoring the employees at the workplace has no middle ground. Some people are on the employees' side and other are with the employers and believe that management owns the network and should be informed about every thing. Monitoring the employees during the job is a very controversial issue; many employees dont seem to understand why exactly the employers are monitoring them. Employers shouldn't keep monitoring a secret. Employees must understand and expect their employers to keep an eye on their business and if the employer can explain the reason why it believes monitoring to be necessary they will not refuse. Employers must always tell their staff about the types of monitoring taking place, the reasons for it, and the sort of information that will be obtained, when, why and how it will be obtained, how the information will be used and to whom it will be disclosed. Within two decades, monitoring tools has been a very important issue. As the technology capability continues to improve and public information is becoming available on the internet, challenges of privacy and its effects on employee performance will continue to escalate. No doubt, future legal and ethical debates about the use of such tools and the differentiation between workspace and private space will rise even more.

References Carroll, Wendy "Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: A review and discussion about future trends" http://www.bizhelp24.com/business-law/monitoring-employees-at-work-3.html http://www.huizenga.nova.edu/jame/employeemonitoring.htm http://www.ceridian.com/myceridian/connection/content/1,4268,13844-61773,00.html

http://www.out-law.com/page-5850 http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs7-work.htm

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