Executive Summary of Employee Monitoring Software and It's Importants

Employee monitoring, due to the increase in cyberloafing and lawsuits, has become more widespread and much easier with the use of new and cheaper technologies.  Both employers and employees are concerned with the ethical implications of constant monitoring.  While employers use monitoring devices to keep track of their employees? actions and productivity, their employees feel that too much monitoring is an invasion of their privacy.  Thus, the ethics of monitoring employees is explored and current practices are discussed.  This document further provides suggestions for reducing cyberloafing and encourages institution?s to create and effectively communicate ethical standards for employee monitoring in their firms.  The author has included actual samples of employees? perceptions and feelings from the surveys and discussions on being monitored.

Employee monitoring has emerged as a necessity and yet as a very controversial issue due to the complexity and widespread use of technology.  Employee monitoring is the act of watching and monitoring employees? actions during working hours using employer equipment/property (Raposa & Mujtaba, 2003).  Employers are concerned with proper employee behavior and Code of Conduct compliance in relation to their industries and related organizations.  While more and more employers are using monitoring devices to check or keep track of their employees? actions, some employees feel that too much monitoring is an invasion of their privacy.  Many employees are anxious about the status of their stocks and/or the safety of their family members around the world since the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the Twin Towers in New York City and feel obligated to watch the latest news on the Internet while on the job.  While exceptional circumstances can be tolerated by the employers, they also feel that excess use of the Internet for non-job related activities while on the job can be destructive for their firm.  The Orlando Sentinel (1999) stated that cost for employees surfing the Internet, during work hours using company equipment and time, in large industries could be as much as one billion dollars each year. Thus, the ethics of monitoring employees is explored and ethical dimensions of this issue are presented in order to provide a full picture of this practice.  Furthermore, throughout the document there are discussions about future evolvement of employee monitoring with the emergence of new technology.

            Webster?s Illustrated Contemporary Dictionary states the definition of ethics as the basic principles of right actions.  Values are things regarded as desirable, worthy, or right, as a belief or an ideal. Morals pertain to character and behavior from society?s view of right and wrong. A belief is the acceptance of something as real or actual.  Ethics can also be the decision making of actions based on a set of values, morals, and beliefs that a person possesses.  This document highlights a corporation?s need for ethical standards, the application of those standards, the ethical treatment of its stakeholders (employees, customers, and/or suppliers), and the impact of the law on employee monitoring.  Why is employee monitoring an emerging ethical issue? It is an ethical issue due to the emergence and introduction of new technology available to both employees and employers that can be misused and abused. 

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Lim (2002) mentioned that, ?anecdotal evidence suggests that the Internet is a double-edged sword which companies should deploy freely to employees with caution.?  While Internet is the best thing that has happened since ?sliced bread?, it is also the biggest international playground for adults of all hobbies.  A survey of 1,000 American workers revealed that 64% of those with Internet access tend to use it for personal interests during working hours.  A question

to start with is ?can technology change or influence our sense of values, morals, or ethics??  The answer would be yes since technology can influence our actions and behaviors as it already has in many cases.  Actions and behaviors, in turn, tend to form our values, ethics and ultimately our character. 

We all live in a technologically advanced world in which informed and just decisions have to be made about very technical and enormously complicated issues. One major concerrn that has been voiced repeatedly regarding technolgical advances is use of the Internet and privacy issues. 

Anyone (at work or home) who uses your computer or has access to it can find out why you have been using it.  Every time you use the Internet your Internet activities are being recorded and every picture you've seen while you are on-line is probably copied to your computer?s hard drive and connected servers. For example, every website you've visited on-line is often recorded into a secret file in Windows and is usually added to your drop down list.  Even your homepage could be changed and you can be tracked from anywhere in the world. O

While many people think of e-mail as a convenient alternative to a telephone conversation and just as private (although many professional telephone calls are monitored as well) there is a big difference. E-mail is as public as a postcard and leaves a written record long after it has been erased. Any skilled person can recover the e-mail message's ghost somewhere deep in the bowels of a networked system. And so far, businesses seem to have the perfect right to do so, according to the law and recent court rulings. Pushing the delete button doesn't do much, because we usually find a copy somewhere else on the system.

According to a study conducted by ComStore Networks, 59% of on-line sales in 2002 were conducted from the shopper?s workplace.  Peak Internet access from work occurred between 10 A.M. and Noon.  That means many employees are taking advantage of employer-provided access to the Web to conduct distinctly non-work related business.  This includes shopping, bidding on on-line auctions, booking travel, visiting chat rooms, writing personal e-mails or just surfing the Internet as a hobby. One company in Seattle, N3H3, which tracks lost productivity, estimates that conducting personal business and surfing at work costs the typical 1000 employee company approximately 11 million dollars a year  (Future Magazine 2003) and another study totals this to about 63 billion dollars each for American firms. 

There are however legitimate individuals in many firms that are required to surf the net to check out the industry, their customers, their suppliers, their competitors and so on. One example would be ?Shared Software? authors that write software and then share their work over the Internet, more or less for free. While technicians and group support system facilitators often fill formal roles within organizations, the role of shared software authors is less defined and often falls completely outside of formal organizational boundaries. Their role is bounded by the needs created by new technology, is played out over electronic communication networks, and is exemplified by demonstrations of commitment. Their role in the social exchange of information over the Internet and World Wide Web has not changed much over the last few years, but their influence on society has increased along with the influence of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Shared software authors are a unique set of people whose behavior is not easily explained with conventional models.

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