Other companies may elect, with all legal protection, to prevent any web navigation beyond those sites which are essential to conducting business. Why do companies implement e-mail and Internet use policies?

Most companies determine to use such monitoring policies based on the calculated view that the loss of privacy will promote greater workplace efficiency by discouraging inappropriate use of company resources and time. Among the reasons supplied for using email and web-use monitoring, the text by iBrief (2001) offers the needs to preserve the company's professional reputation, the maintenance of employee productivity, preventing sexual harassment or cyberstalking, preventing defamation, preventing illegal company disclosure and preventing copyright infringement. (iBrief, 1)

What assumptions might employees make about their privacy at work? How do these policies affect employee privacy at work?

Ultimately, all personnel should recognize that membership in a professional organization surrenders one certain privacy rights. Employers are entitled to take certain steps to protect the use of their resources and time. Further, personnel are generally not considered as having electronic privacy rights where legal workplace realities are concerned. According to the iBrief source, "this inadequacy in the law...

In fact, many employees operate under the false assumption that personal e-mail messages sent from work are protected from their employer's scrutiny." (iBrief, 1)
This is both inaccurate and denotes that the declared privacy policy of an organization will have a much more direct bearing than the law in either affording protections or articulating the absence of said protections. Accordingly, personnel should be aware that privacy extends only into one's personal life. To the extent that an individual should bring elements of this personal life into the scope of the workplace through email correspondence or improper web usage, these privacy rights cease to apply.

This denotes that the retention of personal privacy in the workplace will largely be based upon the discretion of personnel to separate personal and professional lives prudently.

Works Cited:

iBrief. (2001) Monitoring Employee E-Mail: Efficient Workplaces Vs. Employee Privacy. Duke L. & Technology Review, 26.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC). (2009). Fact Sheet 7: Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring. Privacy Rights.org. Online at http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs7-work.htm