It 205

November 7, 2011

IT/205

Monitoring Employees on Networks

E-mail can benefit an organization in many ways. One being that it allows employees to interact with other employees, managers, and customers in lighting speed. An employee can send import messages or documents as an attachment versus send a letter or inter-office mail. Organizations may want to limit how employees use e-mail during the work day to make sure that the focus is on business and personal usage. The path of an e-mail once it leaves an organization is that it is meant to go to a certain person through the internet or the organizations own internal electronic mail systems.

Instant messaging affects organizations networks by allowing an employee to send a quick message to a person or multiple persons within the organization without being in the same place. This allows for employees to communicate quickly with each other and even have meetings to discuss items about the organization. A drawback to having the instant messaging is that it can be very distracting for an employee. Having a message icon flashing in front of an employee could make the employee feel as if they have to check the message right away forgetting what they are doing and potentially make errors. Another drawback is the security threat that instant message can cause unless it is provide by the company.

A benefit of search engines within the work place is that an employee can look up information very quickly without a lot of research. A downside of this is that an employee could use this for personal use instead of business such as shopping or social networking. I think that managers should monitor employee e-mails as an employee is there to work for the organization. This would help to manage work flow and productivity and also possibly help with employee errors.