Monitoring Employees Technology Usage

Monitoring Employees Technology Usage

2/28/2016

University of Maryland- University College

Today employers are facing many challenges with in regards to the rapid growth and change in use of technology in the workplace. With this rapid expansion of technology in today’s workplace bringing the ability to have the unlimited amount of information at an employee’s fingertips. This can lead to many problems if not dealt with appropriately. There are ways to mitigate these issues by placing strict guidelines on what can be accessed by company computer systems and a monitoring system that monitors the compliance to those guidelines. This can only work if an employee understands what an employee monitoring system involves. This paper will discuss the steps needed to take to monitor employee computers, and the issues surround such issue

1. Legal and Ethical Issues of Monitoring Technology

First employers should understand the legality of monitoring employee’s technology usage, such as emails and internet usage using computers systems owned by the company. In most cases when employees are using company computers to communicate or surf the web, there is usually no expectation of privacy for the employee. This is especially true if the employee signs an agreement that the computers will be monitored for violations of company policy as it refers to the acceptable use of company computer systems and networks.

Even in some cases where the employee signs an agreement that email will remain confidential, and the employee sends email violating company policy, the employee can be terminated, the court will side with the employer. One case in which this have occurred was Smyth v. Pillsbury (1996), this case was is the more commonly known cases in which an employee sent a series of emails that were provocative in nature sent by Michael Smyth and employee at Pillsbury referring to the sales management team as “backstabbing bastards” along with other emails. Mr....