Electonic Monitoring in the Workplace

Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace

by

Consumer

Electronic monitoring in the workplace is becoming more commonplace There are both advantaged and disadvantages to this practice . There are various reasons that employers choose to monitor employees , and issues arise on both sides of the fence for the justification of the practice

According to a survey done by the American Management Association 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 s (Morgan

, 1999 This is a very high percentage of employers in the United States . Why are they doing so ? There are several reasons

Maintaining the company 's professional reputation and image

Maintaining employee productivity

Preventing and discouraging sexual or other illegal workplace harassment

Preventing "cyberstalking " by employees

Preventing possible defamation liability

Preventing employee disclosure of trade secrets and other confidential information and

Avoiding copyright and other intellectual property infringement from employees illegally downloading software

The employer will state that monitoring employees will improve customer satisfaction , increase employee productivity , and make the employees perform better . There are , of course , pros and cons to this theory Many employees feel that they are having their privacy violated by being monitored so closely

Electronic mail almost as common as the telephone as a workplace communication tool . But , unfortunately , employees ' personal use of the e-mail has resulted in lost work time and occasional improper use of the e-mail system (Shostak and Wong , 1999 ' This of course , leads to employers feeling that they are quite justified by monitoring all activities on an employee computer . Not only can email be monitored but even the number of mistakes a person makes in typing a letter can be checked . Of course , it also includes the ability to see any e-mails an employee may receive (Kidwell and Kidwell , 1996 . According to a one study , over 130 million workers are currently mailing recipients 2 .8 billion e-mail messages each day (Hawkins , 1999

Of course , employees will argue that it is unfair of an employer to check their e-mail . Yet , the law is not on their side . The law does provide for protection of electronic mail , yet this doesn 't prevent an employer , as the server of the service , from being allowed to read any and all mail from its servers . The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA ) of 1986 is the only law that deals with e-mail (Pivec and Brinkerhoff , 1999 . As stated , this law would protect a person from opening e-mail of a person on his or her own private computer , but does not protect an employee from having communications initiated on the job intercepted

This has been tested in at least one case . In a Pennsylvania case , an employee lost his case when he tried to claim invasion of privacy under the ECPA when fired for inappropriate use of e-mail while working . The Federal Court upheld that the employee that had been terminated had no right to expect privacy (Lewis...