Question

Technology now enables companies to monitor employees by measuring keystrokes, tracking the duration of calls, video surveillance, listening in on telephone calls, and even chairs that can measure worker wiggling (presuming that more wiggling means less working). When do electronic monitoring devices cross the line from being effective management control methods to being intrusions on employee privacy?

Answer 1

It is right to expect for a company that all their employees should spend more time working and concentrate on the productivity.They also need to remember that the employees also need the freedom to a certain extent at the company. This will reduce the mental pressure that there is someone watching them at all time and this will distract their mind. So the company needs to make sure that they do not cross the line and intrude the employee privacy. The some of the things that a company can do are making use of the surveillance cameras to see what the employees are doing when they working if the productivity is going down over a period of time. This will help the company identify the required steps to make the employees correct their mistakes. They can also track the use of the company network and how it is used on the internet to search. They can see whether the company is using the internet to work or for his personal use most of the times. This is not against the privacy of the employees. Even the duration of the call can also be monitored to know if they are longer than the usual business calls. But listening to the calls is definitely against the privacy of the employees because the employees will have a family. They will have a hundred things to discuss and might have an emergency as well that they have to deal with. So it is not right for the company to listen to what they discuss and they will make the employee upset. Measuring wiggling does not make any sense as the working style changes from one person to the other. So the company cannot take this as a parameter to measure the productivity.