The Legal, Ethical, and Managerial Concerns of Employee Monitoring

THE LEGAL , ETHICAL , AND MANAGERIAL CONCERNS OF EMPLOYEE MONITORING

2009

In today 's business environment , the vast majority of employees have access to various types of technology to help complete their tasks in a more productive manner . These new types of technology - Internet electronic mail (email , instant messaging (IM , etc . - keep employees in touch with one another and provide for a vast array of knowledge at the click of a mouse . However , as with other advances in the workplace there are problems which are becoming increasingly apparent to employers . A

2003 survey by Websense reported that employees spend one-third of their time on the Internet surfing for non-work related s (Vardi and Weitz , 2004 . The estimated annual cost of this lost work time to American companies is 85 billion (Vardi and Weitz , 2004 Despite this , lost productivity and slowed network connections are actually the least of employer worries . Employers need to be mindful that they can be held liable for what their employees are doing on company time with company property . The idea of monitoring employees in the workplace is often referred to as the "Big Brother ' phenomenon wherein employees are constantly under the watch of their supervisors This constant observation of employees ' work behavior through their computer or other technology is parallel to having a supervisor standing over one 's shoulder for the entire day

The objective of organizations ' implementing employee monitoring (EM ) is to provide a way to protect themselves and to prevent current and future misbehavior...