E-Policies and Their Role in a Company

ePolicies

A company is typically focused on adopting HR policies that prevent harassment in the office and on generally taking on strategies that encourage workers to put across certain behaviors. With the Internet currently providing companies worldwide with the ability to significantly reduce costs, people are becoming more and more concerned about it being used for things other than the profit of the institutions they work in. As a consequence, institutions in the contemporary society aim to have their employers well-acquainted with why it would be important for them to only perform particular activities while using technologies they are provided with.

The world has seen a growing number of lawsuits associated with employees using email and internet mediums abusively. This influenced many companies to get actively involved in creating policies that first enable them to understand corporate risks they face and that then make it possible for them to develop strategies that control the actions employees perform while using software they're provided with. Taking on such thinking is probable to reduce the risks of coming across issues resulting from employees abusing their position.

While concepts like confidence are essential in the workplace and while it is important to let employees know that they are trusted, it is also important to have a way to observe their behavior and to determine whether or not this respective behavior has a negative impact on the company as a whole. Simply looking at how people behave physically and toward other employees is relatively easy when compared to verifying their activity on the internet.

A company's email system would have to be secure both for employees and for the company as a whole. This means that the respective company needs to concentrate on controlling the creation and use of email throughout the institution. "Content rules keep e-mail free of personal opinions, off-color jokes, and inappropriate commentary, which can haunt organization during litigation, audits, or other formal proceedings." (Flynn & Kahn, p. 27) A trial can often involve internal messages in a company and its lawyers would thus risk being left with no alternative but to settle or to simply lose.

In order for an email system to be as effective as possible, the company primarily needs to inform employees that they have to refrain from putting across personal opinions with regard to delicate topics. Commentaries that are critical of the firm or of other employees can be devastating if they fall into the hands of the wrong people. Courts are known to emphasize that detrimental opinions (toward the company) observed in employee emails are likely to be true, taking into account that these people are probable to have a complex understanding of everything that goes on in the institution.

Many companies ignore the significance of emails within the work environment. This is often due to people's tendency to consider privacy settings and to refrain from interfering with the employee's right to express him or herself. Even with this, email is especially important because it practically makes the difference between a company that secures its information and one that is exposed to being taken advantage of. "The bottom line: Fail to legitimize your e-mail system by applying business rules and establishing policy governing creation and content, and the courts may not consider your e-mail trustworthy and your messages as business records." (Flynn & Kahn, p. 28)

An employee creates intellectual property rights as he or she plays an active role in a company. Most companies use information employees create with the purpose of increasing their profits and actually encourage the creation of such information. In turn, employees who are responsible for making this respective information available come to believe that they deserve to be provided with a larger salary on account of the fact that their companies profit from the enterprise. The company that this essay devises an intellectual property policy for would thus have to have a complex understanding of how it can use it. "More importantly from an employment law perspective, some companies may not be fully cognizant of the activities being taken by their employees and may not realize that although an employee is not formally engaged in research and development activities, he has created a new invention." (Sandeen, p. 29)

Devising a strategy encompassing employee rights is essential for the company. Even with this, the institution also needs to consider methods of making it likely for it to increase its profits as a consequence of supporting its employee's activities within the company. While being part of the company, the employee needs to be informed with regard to his or her rights and needs to be encouraged to accept that intellectual property that he or she is responsible for creating is going to play a positive role in upgrading his or her status.

An idea supporting commission-based actions in a company might seem to many as being immoral and as being stressful for employees. In some cases employees feel pressured to perform perfectly and believe that they are unlikely to be successful unless they contribute to creating ground-breaking ideas. In order to prevent this from happening, the company needs to encourage them to work at a pace that they are used to and to involve all of their ingenuity in fields that they are especially familiar with. As they experience graduate progress they can also be encouraged to play a role in matters that they are less acquainted with. This is probable to enable them to take open-minded approaches in domains they interact with and to eventually make it possible for them to actually bring great benefits both for themselves and for the companies they work in.

In a situation involving employees providing personal opinions with regard to business deals that the company is involved in, directors are firstly going to assess whether or not these respective employees were entitled to express their opinions (ie if they were involved in projects and if their emails were sent with the intention of bringing something positive to those projects). In cases when they were not actually entitled to express their opinions as a result of the company's policy, they are going to be penalized and made aware of the significance of maintaining an objective attitude as long as they play an active role within the company. If the company is part of a court trial and this information is used with the purpose of harming its reputations, employees responsible for this are going to be fired and the firm as a whole is going to install yearly educational sessions meant to inform employees about the significance of understanding the difference between their personal opinions and their opinions as employees.