Employee privacy is jeopardized by monitoring
Companies, on the other hand, have continued to use internet monitoring as a vital tool for monitoring employees during working hours. The Internet has become the best tool to help in this endeavor. Businesses have been secretly monitoring employees, raising concerns about workers' rights to the workplace. Various businesses have real worries, and internet use has affected productivity. Electronic surveillance, on the other hand, takes away the employee's autonomy and privacy. For many decades, the law has enabled the offline invasion of workers' privacy in the following ways: background checks, drug testing, psychological exams, in-store video surveillance, and lie detector tests. Technology has helped the employer to gather enormous employee data; this data is more than necessary to satisfy productivity and safety concerns. The employer is using lane point to collect employee data when they use workplace computers thought monitoring surf the web, send the email and depart time from workstations (Fort, Raymond, & Shackelford, 2016, p.149). Another monitoring method is a keystroke logging; this is an undetectable program installed on employee's computer. This program record all the activities to hidden directories which can only access by the employer only.
Companies are advised to monitor network traffic
Companies are advised to monitor network traffic to monitor employees deliberately or accidental action of spill company confidential data or from allowing worms to spread through company network destroying important information. Companies are also held responsible for all transactions done through its network by the employee, hence raising the need to monitor every activity. Law allows the employer to be held to account for employee actions such as the distribution of graphic or offensive sexual material, violation of copyright laws, and unauthorized confidential information disclosure to unauthorized personnel.
The surveillance program affects employee morale
This action makes the employer have the right to monitor the behavior of the employees. But the surveillance program affects employee morale. They see this as the breach of their trust, and they feel like they should be left to perform their duty in autonomously and professionally manner. On the other hand, this autonomy in the wired workplace is complicated by the ambiguous productivity nature of employees (Highhouse, Doverspike, & Guion, 2015). This is because technology and the internet offer temptation to the employee to avoid work and the same time is a powerful tool to carry out tasks. Workstation chat and web are a major time wasting ways by which employee uses.
The employer is motivated to invest in the surveillance program
The employer is being motivated to invest in the surveillance program, due to the actual activities which happen behind the computers, the unobservable employee's behavior has reached an arming stage in the companies. The reason here is that they are hard to detect, making employees taking competitive advantage of doing their personal activities on the Internet leading to low production of services in the organization (Highhouse, Doverspike, & Guion, 2015). Monitoring brings unintended resentment to the employees, and continuous policing and limiting internet use to works as the form of stressful outlet remover can cause exacerbate tension between employers and staff. Employees see it as extremely arbitrary and can have an effect on a severe degree on their morale.
Monitoring employees' activities
Joseph Schmitt, an Employment law attorney, says that the employer should not care about the amount of time the employees are using on the internet if they are performing their duties the way is required, and they are not accessing inappropriate websites. But many experts have argued that monitoring the employee's activities increase the company productivity. This assumption has been discarded by some other experts, who have to maintain that even time spent on personal internet browsing can also enhance the productivity of the company.
The need for public discussion and better disclosure
Bill Coleman, Salary.com executive, says that casual conversation and personal internet browsing can lead employees to gain operating efficiencies or to develop startup business ideas. This will benefit the employer. Thus, he encouraged them to have faith in employees and allow them to exercise their autonomy (Yanisky-Ravid, 2014, p.53). However, the freedom and staff privacy right remain murky in the field of law during the workplace duration.
The role of the judicial system
It falls on the judicial system to determine the gap between the employers' power and employee's rights. But the courts have shown no willingness to intrude the issue of computer network laws and the power of the organization to monitor them. The Delaware and Connecticut require the companies to disclose surveillance type to the employee, although the Federal laws do not provide the necessary guidelines on how employees monitoring should be done. The employer and staff are left to sort the benefits and the potential risks of technology regarding employment and contract of agreements. Due to advanced technology, the employer's and employee's protection will require more public discussion, better disclosure to employees, and greater awareness of these programs to observe and guard individual freedoms during employee monitoring exercise (Yanisky-Ravid, 2014, p.53).
Conclusion
To protect time, property, and money. It is the right of the employer to monitor employee through the internet and electronic surveillance. This will help to create a safe working environment for both parties, but protecting the organization's data and making working time more productive. But the employer should also maintain employee's privacy and autonomy by not gathering more information about the employee. However, the company should set rules and regulations governing the use of the Internet in the workplace and outline explicitly in the policy the dos and don'ts of internet usage.
References
Fort, T. L., Raymond, A. H., & Shackelford, S. J. (2016). Angel on Your Shoulder: Prompting Employees to Do the Right Thing through the Use of Wearables, The. Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop., 14, 139.
Highhouse, S., Doverspike, D., & Guion, R. M. (2015). Essentials of personnel assessment and selection. Routledge.
Yanisky-Ravid, S. (2014). To read or not to read: Privacy within social networks, the entitlement of employees to a virtual private zone, and the balloon theory. Am. UL Rev., 64, 53.
