Monitoring Employees
Electronic monitoring is often necessary to detect violations of company rules and policies and criminal activity. However, the employer must balance its need to protect the company with their employees' rights to privacy. This paper describes steps a business should take to make sure that the employee is treated fairly.
An Acceptable Use policy should be established to inform employees that they will be monitored and for what purposes. This will help to establish trust with employees, gain compliance with electronic communications procedures and prevent unwanted invasion of privacy lawsuits. The Acceptable Use policy should also specify exactly what actions a company will take if an employee does not follow the policy.
When deciding what activities to monitor, the company should select only those that present legitimate business concerns. This area is open for broad interpretation. Some organizations view the use of technology for personal use on business time as a drain on productivity and can even go as far as to categorize it as theft. Given that the employer has many measures of work performance, it seems inappropriate to be concerned with time spent surfing the Web. This degree of control is likely to be resented by employees and can have greater implications for productivity than the personal use itself. Instead of focusing on personal use, the employer would be better served by concentrating on illegal activities and the use of communications for harassment.
How the employee is monitored is also important. Monitoring should be automated as much as possible to avoid the possibility of one individual being singled out more than another. And, monitoring at regular intervals as opposed constant monitoring can help to protect privacy. Finally, the depth of monitoring needs to matched to the situational requirements. For instance, if monitoring content isn't necessary companies shouldn't do it.
In summary, the necessity for electronic monitoring is an unfortunate reality that must be balanced with an employees' right to privacy. By informing the employee, monitoring only what is reasonable, and conducting monitoring in an appropriate way, the employer can achieve their objectives without being unethical.
