How do you compare employer & employee positions on electronic monitoring at the workplace?
Pros of Electronic Surveillance of Employees at Work
Powerful reasons exist to monitor employee online behavior at work. These reasons are compelling for many employers and understandable as I observe organizations.
In my own experience with electronic surveillance of employees, I walked an employee, who had been watching pornographic movies at work, from his cubicle to his car, just thirty minutes after discovering how he had been spending his time at work. (The appropriate policies prohibiting this behavior were in place and he had been trained.)
In another experience in a client company, employees complained that their supervisor was surfing the Web during most of the business day. The network administrator confirmed that the supervisor was visiting job board sites, doing online banking, shopping, chatting and posting on message boards, reading recipe sites, and spending hours in personal email for over six hours a day.
On the day we were prepared to fire this employee, the employee gave notice and we made an agreement about an orderly, mutually beneficial transition.
In yet another experience in a client company, it was discovered that an employee had been doing her ancillary bookkeeping for a personal business on company time and in her company-provided computer. The employee gave notice and was escorted from the premises. The employee later begged to have this material back and the employer kindly provided the records.
With these examples in mind, note that electronic surveillance of employees at work can yield results that are beneficial to the employer.
