User:Emmaras/sandbox

"Employee monitoring is the act of surveying employee activity. Organizations engage in employee monitoring to track performance, to avoid legal liability, to protect trade secrets, and to address other security concerns. This practice may impact employee satisfaction due to its impact on the privacy of the employees<nowiki>." I am not sure where this definition came from ? we should be looking into the course to make sure its reliable and relevant. This section is very short and probably needs more information? Emmaras (talk) 20:46, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Employee monitoring is the act of employers surveying employee activity through different surveillance methods. Organizations engage in employee monitoring for many different reasons such as to track the activities done in the workplace, to avoid legal liability, to protect trade secrets, and to address other security concerns. This practice has been called necessary and at the same time been viewed as an invasion of employee privacy. Among organizations the extent and methods of employee monitoring differ. Emmaras (talk) 01:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Methods

Due to the use of company computers, telephones, workspaces, and software, employers can have access to the daily activities of their employees. These devices are used to monitor the organizations employees. Common methods of monitoring include software monitoring, telephone tapping, video surveillance, email monitoring, and location monitoring.

Software monitoring can occur if employees use company computers for their work, companies often utilize employee monitoring software that allows them to track what their employees are doing on the computers. Such as, what the speed of typing is, what mistakes are made, what applications were used, and what specific keys were pressed.

Telephone tapping can be used to recover employees' phone call details and conversations. These can be recorded during monitoring. The number of calls, the duration of each call, and the idle time between calls, can all go into an automatic log for analysis by the company.[1]

Video surveillance equipment can provide video feed of employee activities that are passed through to a central location where they are monitored live by another person. These can be recorded and stored for future reference which some believe is the most accurate way to monitor employees. "This is a benefit because it provides an unbiased method of performance evaluation and prevents the interference of a manager's feelings in an employee's review (Mishra and Crampton, 1998)." Management can review the performance of an employee by checking the surveillance to detect and potentially prevent problems.[2]

Email monitoring gives employers the ability to look at email messages sent or received by their employees. Emails can be viewed and recovered even if they had been previously deleted.In the United States, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act provides some privacy protections regarding monitoring of employees' email messages and other electronic communications. See Electronic Communications Privacy Act § Employee Privacy.

Location monitoring can occur and be used for employees that do not work in a static location. Supervisors may choose to track their location. Common examples of companies that use location monitoring are delivery and transportation industries. In some of these cases, the employee monitoring is incidental as the location is tracked for other purposes, that can help improve customer satisfaction. Emmaras (talk) 01:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Ethical issues[edit source]

Employee monitoring often is in conflict with employees' privacy.[3] Monitoring often collects work-related activities, but it can also collect employee's personal information that is not linked to their work. Monitoring in the workplace may put employers and employees at odds because both sides are trying to protect personal interests. Employees want to maintain their privacy while employers want to ensure company resources aren't misused. In any case, companies can maintain ethical monitoring policies by avoiding indiscriminate monitoring of employees' activities.[4] The employee needs to understand what is expected of them while the employer needs to establish that rule.

Legal issues[edit source]

In Canada, it is illegal to perform invasive monitoring, such as reading an employee's emails, unless it can be shown that it is a necessary precaution and there are no other alternatives.[5] In Maryland, everyone in the conversation must give consent before the conversation can be recorded. The state of California requires that the monitored conversations have a beep at certain intervals or there must be a message informing the caller that the conversations may be recorded. However, this does not inform the company representative which calls are being recorded. Other states, including Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and New Jersey have laws relating to when a conversation can be recorded.

The following uses of employee information are generally considered legal:

Find needed business information when the employee is not available. Protect security of proprietary information and data. Prevent or investigate possible criminal activities by employees. Prevent personal use of employer facilities. Check for violations of company policy against sending offensive or pornographic email. Investigate complaints of harassment. Check for illegal software. According to Computer Monitoring: The Hidden War Of Control,"The employer of today has the ability and legal right to read e-mail, review files stored on a company computer, examine computer usage, and track individual employee computer activities. The idea of anonymous actions is an illusion. Every action between a network and the computers connected to it can be tracked. Every action by an individual worker on a computer can be tracked, analyzed and used against the employee. The protections and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are there to protect the individual from the Government and do not generally apply to the normal employee/employer relationship."[6]

There is a similar situation in Europe. In January 2016, European Court of Human Rights issued a landmark ruling in the case of Bărbulescu v Romania (61496/08) regarding monitoring of employees’ computers. The employee Mr. Bărbulescu accused the employer of violating his rights to ‘private life’ and ‘correspondence’ set in the Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights[7]. But the Court stated that the employer had every right to monitor the employee’s computer in this case due to the fact that such monitoring was implemented to ensure that there is no breach of company policy. This historic ruling has confirmed that it is not unreasonable for employers to monitor their employees’ computer activity and such monitoring does not violate their human rights.

A year later, in July 2017, German court also ruled that computer monitoring of employees is reasonable but the use of keylogging software is excessive[8].

Despite the obvious tendency of courts taking the employers’ side when it comes to employee monitoring, there are still quite a lot of gray areas. Even employee monitoring software developers warn that in each case it is still recommended to advise a legal representative and the employees should give a written agreement with such monitoring[9].

Financial benefits[edit source] Besides monitoring the safety and productivity of employees, employee monitoring is used to help businesses financially. From the employee who steals time and money from a business by not meeting productivity standards to redefining unprofitable processes in employee actions, companies that monitor their employees allow for a higher chance of profiting financially through small investments. Monitoring employees can also help save companies money as it provides protection in litigation by their employees for issues such as illegal activities and failing to perform their job.

According to the American Management Association, 48 percent of surveyed companies use video monitoring to protect against theft. And 78% of employers notify their employees about this anti-theft monitoring, according to The Latest on Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance.[11] The potential productivity loses is approximately one million dollars annually for a company with 500 employees surfing the Internet for just a half hour a day, as reported by Court in 2004.[13] This surveillance of productivity does not prevent theft of money, but it does prevent theft of time by an employee and makes sure that people are doing what they are supposed to be doing in the workplace. Despite those statistics, an article from Labour Economics argues that disallowing companies from tracking on-the-job performance through surveillance is sensible economically when looking at the efficiency wage theory. It does say that surveillance to protect against crime should still be allowed, however.[12]

An indirect way that companies can be affected financially through employee monitoring is that they can be sure they are billing clients correctly. According to Business 2 Community, inaccurately billing clients is very possible because of the human error. These inaccuracies can cause a dispute between a company and a client which could eventually lead to the client terminating its business with the company. This sort of termination will not only hurt the company's revenue stream but also its reputation with other clients or potential clients. The suggested solution to this problem is a time tracking software to correctly monitor the number of hours a client spends with an employee.

https://www.business2community.com/human-resources/6-benefits-of-employee-monitoring-01347304

Aaronm3 (talk) 04:00, 3 May 2018 (UTC) Aaronm3 (talk) 04:13, 3 May 2018 (UTC) Aaronm3 (talk) 01:26, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

One of the most effective forms of employee monitoring is through the use of video surveillance equipment. Video feeds of employee activities are passed through to a central location where they are monitored live by another person. "This is a benefit because it provides an unbiased method of performance evaluation and prevents the interference of a manager's feelings in an employee's review (Mishra and Crampton, 1998)." Management can review the performance of an employee by checking the surveillance to detect problems before they become too costly.

--For Peer Review--

Legal Issues: With employee monitoring, there are many guide-lines that one must follow and put in place to protect the company and the individual. Some following cases are ones that have shaped the certain rules and regulations that are in effect today. For instance, in Canada, it is illegal to perform invasive monitoring, such as reading an employee's emails, unless it can be shown that it is a necessary precaution and there are no other alternatives. [5] In Maryland, everyone in the conversation must give consent before the conversation can be recorded. The state of California requires that the monitored conversations have a beep at certain intervals or there must be a message informing the caller that the conversations may be recorded. However, this does not inform the company representative which calls are being recorded. Other states, including Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and New Jersey have laws relating to when a conversation can be recorded.

Legal uses of employee information:

• Find needed business information when the employee is not available. • Protect security of proprietary information and data. • Prevent or investigate possible criminal activities by employees. • Prevent personal use of employer facilities. • Check for violations of company policy against sending offensive or pornographic email. • Investigate complaints of harassment. • Check for illegal software. 

According to Computer Monitoring: The Hidden War of Control, "The employer of today has the ability and legal right to read e-mail, review files stored on a company computer, examine computer usage, and track individual employee computer activities. The idea of anonymous actions is an illusion. Every action between a network and the computers connected to it can be tracked. Every action by an individual worker on a computer can be tracked, analyzed and used against the employee. The protections and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are there to protect the individual from the Government and do not generally apply to the normal employee/employer relationship."[6]

Despite the obvious tendency of courts taking the employers’ side when it comes to employee monitoring, there are still quite a lot of gray areas. Even employee monitoring software developers warn that in each case it is still recommended to advise a legal representative and the employees should give a written agreement with such monitoring [9]. (Not sure if we need this?) Nicole.lallier (talk) 01:32, 25 March 2018 (UTC)