Employer Surveillance, Privacy, and Employee Contempt

Introduction: The Rise of Workplace Monitoring

In today's modern workplace, employers across industries have begun to resort to increasingly invasive methods to monitor the performance and behavior of their employees. Once confined largely to banks and retail establishments, employee monitoring has become the norm in most large businesses and many small ones — aimed at everything from promoting professionalism and preventing theft to reducing legal liability and improving customer service. However, like many things, utilizing the various and growing methods of employee surveillance can also have significant and damaging effects on morale and even performance. Even worse, allowing legitimate surveillance to lapse into unfounded infringement upon employee privacy — legal or not — can produce nothing short of contempt within the workforce.

Legitimate Grounds for Employee Surveillance

There is little doubt that companies and employers worldwide have very legitimate reasons for monitoring their employees. These may include protecting company and trade secrets, avoiding legal issues (providing proof against various legal charges and preventing employee behaviors that could result in a lawsuit), increasing worker productivity, and preventing staff from using company time or assets inappropriately. Unfortunately, the line between appropriate monitoring and employee privacy rights can be legally and conceptually vague. Nevertheless, some legal limits have been established at both the state and federal level and are widely accepted.

Common Methods of Monitoring and Their Legal Limits

One of the most widespread methods of employee supervision is monitoring telephone usage. Although once practiced mainly in telephone marketing or customer service, many companies now monitor all aspects of telephone usage under a provision of the Federal Wiretapping Act, which "allows surreptitious monitoring in the 'ordinary course of business' (Lewis, 2001)." It is important to note, however, that employers do not have unlimited freedom under this law and must demonstrate that monitoring is genuinely necessary for maintaining normal business operations — for example, ensuring employee-customer quality or protecting against the disclosure of trade secrets.

Another legitimate method employers use involves monitoring electronic communications such as email. Like telephone monitoring, email monitoring is not legal in every circumstance; it must be justified "in the ordinary course of business," or apply "for the provider of the communication service or for situations where one of the parties to the communication gives prior consent (Lewis)." As long as the email is sent over a company internet account, the employee is generally not considered to have an "expectation of privacy (Lewis)."

One of the most common practices employers use to ensure productivity is monitoring internet use — particularly through technologies such as "key logging" and the recording of specific websites visited along with time spent on those sites. Beyond productivity concerns, allowing an environment in which employees can freely view and download inappropriate or offensive material from the internet — which may be visible to co-workers or forwarded via email — can form the basis of a potentially costly sexual harassment claim against the employer or company.

Finally, video monitoring is perhaps the most commonly recognized form of employee surveillance. Although there are several legitimate reasons employers might monitor employees and the work environment — foremost among them protection against criminal activity such as robbery or theft — it can easily cross into a feeling of intrusiveness. According to the National Work Rights Institute, "Cameras are everywhere in the American workplace, advanced wireless and digital systems that are compact and often hidden. In fact, 49.9% of American offices and workspaces are monitored in this way (NWI, 2000)." Even more striking, "Few legal restrictions are placed on their use. Indeed, some states even allow cameras in sensitive locations such as employee locker rooms and bathrooms (NWI, 2000)." In such an atmosphere, it is easy to see how surveillance technology might be abused or considered offensive to employees.

Conclusion

Although it may seem legitimate and even extremely useful for employers to monitor their employees — whether through video, internet, telephone, or other forms of electronic surveillance — the benefits may not always be straightforward, especially in industries or work situations that have not traditionally been monitored. Few employees object to cameras positioned at cash drawers or aimed at discouraging robbery. However, many begin to bristle when computer workstations are tracked by keystroke-recording software, telephone conversations are monitored, and emails are regularly intercepted. When hidden cameras are also introduced, many employees begin to see the reality of "Big Brother" all too close to home.

Although monitoring employee performance and honesty is important, an excessive use of potentially privacy-invading technologies and methods can actually reduce or eliminate any benefit they might deliver — particularly when they inspire low morale, unease, mutual distrust, and eventual contempt. Most employers aim to foster a team atmosphere in which employees feel invested in the company's success. Creating strong feelings of resentment not only undermines that goal, but it also opens the door to passive and overt — if subtle — sabotage of company objectives. This is an outcome that, unfortunately, no amount of surveillance can effectively prevent.

Works Cited

Houston, Justine, James Barnes, and Amanda Keynes. "Examination of the Issue of Electronic Monitoring of Employees." 1999. Retrieved October 10, 2004.

James, Geoffrey. "Employee Monitoring: How to Respect Privacy Rights and Prevent Morale Backlash." 2004. Retrieved October 10, 2004.

NWI. National Work Rights Institute. "Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace." 2000. Retrieved October 10, 2004.

Stanford University. "Monitoring in the Workplace: Health Concerns." 2004. Retrieved October 10, 2004.

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. "The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions." OTA-CIT-333, 1987.

Wetanson, Burt. "'Big Brother' in the Workplace." Working World, 2003. Retrieved October 10, 2004.