Question

Many employers are monitoring employees to see how many and what types of phone calls they are making. Some companies also monitor emails employees send and receive and websites they access. In your initial discussion post, respond to the following questions:

How might a company benefit from gathering this type of information?

Why might employees object to being monitored?

Do you think this type of monitoring is appropriate or inappropriate, from a security perspective? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

A company may be benefitted from this kind of monitoring in certain ways-

To analyze the employees working habits and to provide them their real productivity figure.

They can also be educated about their performance in feedback process.

It can provide a company about the employees behaviour and assist in restructuring the working schedule and design in effective manner.

It can also benefit the organization by preventing injury likely to cause by any employee's disloyalty.

Employee may object to being monitored because the personal life and privacy of the employee is likely to be  at risk. When an employee uses company held mobiles or telephone, and he uses it for personal communications too then his data can be misused.

Sometimes monitoring official mails and texts can reduce employee's confidence and he feels discomfort in working freely, as everyone has their own style of handling or negotiating any deal or business.

This kind of monitoring is somehow necessary for the organization and for the employees too to analyze their performance and to prevent any miscommunication etc. But excessive monitoring or monitoring beyond the memo given to them is unethical.

It can not be fully considered as appropriate or innappropriate. If done in controlled and ethical manner it is beneficial for organization as well as employees and ensures prevention of confidential data. But if it is unethically done it can breach privacy of the employee.