Monitor Employee E Mail Messages example essay topic

When I first started work as a student technician in the Tech Support department for my college, I thought it will be an experience. It has been two years since then and this job has opened my eyes to the world of emerging technologies. One of the most significant was internet monitoring. I recall my own personal experience when I was subject to such monitoring. Jane, my boss and Mitchell, our senior network specialist, were working on software that allows technicians to fix their clients PCs without leaving their desks. It means the technicians on the basement level could login and troubleshoot their clients PCs on the fifth floor, remotely.

The fellow technicians were the guinea pigs of his experiment and I was part of it too. One day while working, I was sent a request to give up my user rights to the root administrator. It was Jane. As soon as I clicked OK, Jane took over my PC and could check all the windows I was browsing at that time. I had my class website opened at that time. Jane knew that I was a hard worker and supervisors in the university were generally lenient on student workers when it came to homework's and assignments as long as it didn't intervene with work.

Jackie, our full time co-worker, was hysterical and was really cross with Jane. Although Jane sent requests before she could login to the technicians PCs, there were lots of murmurs going on about this software. Initially very much supported by the tech team, as it saved time and energy, this software all of sudden came under severe scrutiny. The software was made by Norton Works called PC Monitor. As more technology has invaded the workplace and employees have gained access to e-mail and the Internet on employer-owned computers, internet monitoring in the workplace should be implemented. More and more people use the internet to complete the daily routine tasks: like flight booking, sending emails, online courses etc.

Employers need to know how productive their employees are during their working hours. There are several factors that we will consider throughout the research; privacy laws, ethics, costs involved, security and other issues. Like most inventions, the rise of computer use, and more specifically e-mail and Internet access in the workplace, have brought new controversies that require a balancing of interests. Legal protections and limitations have not paralleled the rapid growth and access to e-mail and the Internet in the workplace.

For example, to date, no specific adequate legislation addresses an employee's privacy right in his e-mail, and the associated monitoring of employee e-mail and Internet use by employers. Therefore, employers and employees must rely on existing federal and state constitutional and statutory provisions that might apply to e-mail monitoring. In recent years, courts were forced to confront this issue and determine what privacy, if any, an employee has in her e-mail. In the Smyth vs. Pillsbury Company case it was decided that "a company's interest in preventing inappropriate and unprofessional comments or even illegal activity over its e-mail system outweighs any privacy interest the employee may have in those comments". (Walls) Despite the Smyth decision, the debate over e-mail and Internet privacy in the workplace rages on. In 1999, the United States Congress considered passing the Notice of Electronic Monitoring Act ('NEMA'), which would have required employers to give clear and conspicuous notice before monitoring.

The bill would not stop employers from monitoring their employees' communications. However, the bill would require a notice to describe the form of computer use being monitored, the method of monitoring, the information obtained by the monitoring and how the information is to be stored, used and disclosed. However, the bill stalled in committee and has not been re-introduced. According to Melissa Walls, E-mail monitoring in the workplace continues to increase, and at the present time employers can lawfully monitor employee e-mail messages and are not required to notify employees of this practice. However, in light of this evolving area of law, employers should adopt policies or guidelines regarding their monitoring practices, clearly communicate this information to all employees, and consistently enforce the policies. We will discuss these policies later in this research.

Although there are several monitoring software's in the market right now we will discuss some of the most widely available and used ones. We must understand that all monitoring software more or less work the same way and are different from their competitors by their user friendliness and benefits offered. Here are some of them. o Silent Watch: surveillance software produced by Adavi, Inc. 5. Silent Watch allows an employer or its agent to individually and simultaneously monitor an unlimited number of networked computers. It can track the amount of computer idle time of each worker, record every keystroke made, create and E-mail to a designated person a log of every Internet site visited, and monitor all incoming and outgoing E-mail.

It even allows a real-time view of whatever activity is occurring on each connected computer. In other words, a supervisor sitting at her computer can simultaneously see on her screen precisely what activity is occurring on any number of employees's creeks exactly as the employees themselves are seeing it (Frayer 857-874). o Investigator: surveillance software also made by Adavi Inc. 5. Investigator secretly monitors and records each keystroke and every revision. It can call up what is on an employee's screen and can actually store backstrokes of what perhaps you were only "thinking". Beware: the "delete" key doesn't eliminate e-mail messages that you cleared off your computer screen; they stay in a computer file bank, where managers, lawyers and law enforcement can retrieve them years later (Tamen 1 F+). o IM Monitoring Software: A Face Time Communications' monitoring software, which runs on a computer on the firm's internal network, recording all instant messaging traffic.

Certain keywords can be defined to alert managers, or the traffic can simply be put into storage in case it is needed (Fordahl 3 C). o Surf Time Meter: filtering software manufactured by Elron Software Inc. By entering an employee's hourly wage, it calculates a company's cost in lost productivity as a result of inappropriate Web surfing (Swanson 57). o Mail-Sweeper: manufactured by Baltimore Inc. Here a company can block large files from being sent. That's key, because the company wants to limit the cost of sending massive files to its offices around the world (Swanson 57) o Porn-Sweeper: also manufactured by Baltimore Inc. Porn-Sweeper analyzes image attachments for nude or pornographic content and when an inappropriate message is caught, both the sender and the recipient get E-mail letting them know that Porn-Sweeper blocked the message.

The E-mail is held until the sender contacts the Information Technology department to explain why it needs to be sent (Swanson 57) We will now discuss the pros and cons of internet monitoring. We will first highlight some of the disadvantages of such surveillance. Monitoring may be counterproductive, given the animosity and stress that it prompts in employees. Judging by complaints from employees and unions, the general feeling among workers is that monitoring threatens their privacy, intrudes on their personal work in progress, and leads to their being evaluated on criteria that they do not understand. Workers tend to feel that "Big Brother" is always watching, and the fact that everyone is subject to the same scrutiny does little to relieve that sense of exposure (Ottensmeyer & Heroux).

Some companies have implemented monitoring and then stopped because they discovered how counterproductive it could be (Bible). Employees frequently find ways to counter attempts at monitoring. When keystrokes are monitored, for example, a key can be held down continuously to make the count go up (although some software programs can detect this deception). Some employees, offended by what they perceive as a sudden lack of interest, reduce their work efforts to the bare minimum needed to get by. Middle managers foil monitoring attempts by filling in their electronic schedules with meetings because employers may tend to think managers are productive if they are in meetings (Bible). The possible disadvantages for the employer would be the costs to implement such software.

Also it would also take time and money to train personnel to use and apply the monitoring program. We will now consider the advantages of internet monitoring in terms of the employer's perspective (Hartman). The advantages are as follows: o Assess performance o Manage personal communications o Improve the work product o Protect against theft, fraud, computer crime and viruses o Remain competitive o Search for violations in disclosing trade secrets o Obtain information in a business emergency or the absence of the employee o Retrieve lost messages o Help employees effectively use the e-mail system o Determine whether employee gossip hurts workplace morale o Promote efficiency o Provide a workplace that is free of unlawful discrimination (e. g., sexual, racial, other forms of illegal harassment) o Insure that system is being used properly (e. g., no illegal gambling, no receipt, transmission or trafficking in obscenity, pornography, pedophilia) o Investigate complaints of improper use (customers, other employees) Employees, on the other hand, want to be treated as free, equal, capable and rational individuals who have the ability to make their own decisions. Their interests include: o Personal development and valued performance o Ability to conduct some personal business at office o Freedom from monitoring for performance reasons (wary of increased stress / pressure from monitoring) o Freedom from monitoring for privacy reasons o Ability to review data collected and corrects any misinformation To achieve impressive gains in productivity, they must be carefully weighed against potential damage to quality of work life. Therefore, to be able to successfully use such software, employees should ensure that workers use web access for productive, work-related purposes only. To ensure an effective internet monitoring program the management needs to ensure the following points: (Tubell) o Develop a sound Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) - consistent with corporate culture. o Communicate the policy clearly to all computer users (tell them what's acceptable and what's not, etc.) o Train and educate employees on how to use Web-access productively. o Use reliable software tools that are designed specifically to (a) monitor compliance with Web-use policy and (b) proactively control Web access. o Follow up with corrective actions when inappropriate access is detected.

Several employers have various kinds of A UPs. Employees will need to fully review and carefully follow such policies, which typically emphasize many of the following points: (Hillier, 33-34) o The internet and email are to be used for business purposes only; o The employer will not tolerate the use of the email system to transmit offensive and derogatory remarks about a person's race, religion, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, or disability; o Employees are prohibited from browsing and / or downloading and / or forwarding obscene, discriminatory, defamatory, pornographic, threatening, or otherwise offensive material from the internet; o The system is not to be used to transmit any inappropriate material; o Email should not contain defamatory statements about individuals or companies; o The internet and email should not be used to duplicate or transmit copyright material without the copyright owner's written permission; o Personal use of the internet and email, which may interfere with regular business operations, will not be tolerated; o Employees should not transmit confidential or sensitive information throughout the internet or to unauthorized persons or organizations; o The internet and email should not be used for any illegal or unethical activity or any activity that could adversely affect the employer; o Employees must comply with the use of security / passwords and the requirement to shut down daily to reduce the risk of unauthorized access; o The employer reserves the right to monitor the use of the internet and email, at least in response to alleged abuse of these technologies (random enforcement of this may be subject to challenge); o Inappropriate use of email and the internet by employees may lead to discipline, including the risk of dismissal; o The employer owns all email and internet accounts and all data communicated through these accounts even where remote (home) access has been authorized. There is a growing group of business that electronically monitors employee work habits. Nearly half of companies monitor E-mail, up from 38% last year, according to a recent American Management Association survey, while Internet monitoring increased to 62.8%, up from 54.1%. Ninety percent of the more than 1,600 managers queried are at companies with revenue of $10 million or more. Another study by the non-profit Privacy Foundation shows that Internet and E-mail use of one of out of three employees is monitored daily (Swanson 57).

Jupiter Media Metrix says the use of instant messaging in U.S. businesses more than doubled from 2.3 billion minutes in September 2000 to 4.9 billion minutes last September (Fordahl 3 C). A recent study shows Americans spend an average of 21 hours a month online at work, more than twice the amount they do at home, partly because their employers' computers have faster connections. Most of the top 10 Web sites accessed from the office clearly had nothing to do with work, according to the survey by Nielsen / Net Ratings. 30 to 40% of Internet use in the workplace is not related to business at all. 37% of workers say they surf the Web constantly at work (Hartman). The US Department of Labor estimates that wasted time costs corporations up to $3 million a year for every 1,000 employees, as reported in The Standard. com / January 2000 (Hartman).

Newsbytes magazine reported that recreational Web surfing on company time cost employers an estimated $5.3 billion in 1999 and is done by clerks, CEOs, and everyone in between (Tamen 1 F+). According to Wavecrest Computing, workers admit to surfing on the net. Table 1 shows the percentages of various non-work related tasks performed by workers on company's time. Table 1 Non-work related tasks Percentage Make personal travel arrangements 45% Make purchases 40% Search for jobs 37% Check stocks 34% Play games 11% Chat 9% Visit pornographic sites 4% "Companies that do not monitor employees's surfing habits make themselves vulnerable to legal liabilities, probable bandwidth abuse and employee productivity gaps". - The Aberdeen Group (Hartman) "On average, non-work related surfing costs American businesses $54 billion and 30%-40% in productivity losses every year. Businesses lose an estimated 26 million man-hours annually to online game playing alone".

- The Gartner Group (Hartman) "Porn sites are the diversion of choice, but shopping, day-trading, and Net affairs also help while away nearly a third of the average workday". - Business Week, June 12, 2000 (Hartman) Internet monitoring is a people issue, not solely an IT challenge. As we spearhead into the next century this will be a topic of concern. To successfully implement internet monitoring the objective should be to capitalize on the beneficial, productive potential of Web access while preventing or minimizing its negative aspects. The challenge is to achieve this objective in a balanced way, one that fosters and promotes the interest of the enterprise as a whole without creating an oppressive "Big Brother is watching you" climate in the work place. This is a delicate balancing act, one that is not easy to define and achieve.

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