Business Managment-Monitoring Employees in the Workplace

Imagine being a CEO of one the fortune 500 companies. You just entered the board room with your fellow trustees to discuss your yearly financial reviews for the company. The meeting is going par usual until one of your fellow board members discovers what he thinks to be a misprint in the annual financial report. What may seem like a typo at first soon becomes a reality. Nearly 17 million dollars is missing from what seems to be a private account. What was supposed to be a standard board meeting has now turned into a real life "Clue" mystery. This amount of money could only be withheld by someone who has some sort of leadership role in the company. With a table surrounded by a sleuth of "trust"ees it's hard to imagine as the CEO that one of your fellow employees could even think about taking this substantial amount of money from the company they work for. Even with anger and disbelief rolling throughout your mind there is still one question that never leaves your mind. How? Could have Chia Teck Leng been caught early before he embezzled millions of dollars from his company? Many call Leng a criminal genius. Maybe he was just too good. It is hard to say without knowing the exact monitoring tools (if any) that his company used to keep track of their financials. There is no doubt now that the company has raised its measures of monitoring after this case went public.

This situation shadows the real situation of Chia Teck Leng, a finance manager at Asia Pacific Breweries. Back in 2004 he was sentenced to 42 years in jail for embezzling over 117 million over a four year period by forging documents; all of this to feed his gambling addiction. It's hard to think that someone could be so selfish and would take an enormous risk for what many see as a meaningless habit. But let's get back to the main issue on how exactly one was able to get away with taking well over 17 million dollars a year(for four years) from one of the region's biggest and most successful brewery (Corruption.Net, 2012).

This paper will discuss monitoring employees in the workplace and how it corresponds with Management Information Systems(MIS).Both topics go hand and hand since MIS deal with the study of people, technology, organizations and the relationships among them. Monitoring ones employees is becoming more frequent due to the advancements in technology. It is almost the norm in top corporations today. Even so that now small business have grabbed ahold of this trend in hopes of a more stable and successful work environment with immense financial achievements in mind.

Stories like Chia Teck Leng aren't few and far between. Over the years there have been many debates on whether monitoring employees invades ones privacy. On one hand, future employees should take on and respect all responsibilities given as a trusted employee for any company big or small. On the other hand, fellow employees may see the monitoring of oneself as a sense of distrust.

So why is employee monitoring relevant? How far is too far when it comes down to it, and what is in store for the future of employee monitoring?

With the business market changing every day, relevancy is something the management should be aware of. So is employee monitoring relevant? From a management side: absolutely. Running a corporation or small business without any form of information system is almost (and should be) unheard of these days. For example: what if a current customer had an important document that needed to be shipped out overnight. Let's say you went to UPS to have it shipped and instead of the now usual confirmation number given to a customer to track his/her package to ensure it is delivered on time, they instead get a response from the UPS cashier that isn't so promising. The employee gives them a response such as; "I can't exactly tell you when/if your package arrives on time because we at UPS don't track our drivers". Not exactly the answer you want to hear. It is businesses like UPS and other delivery companies that have MIS to thank for part of their success today. Especially in a society like today where most want instant gratification. This type of monitoring not only helps management but also helps the customer. UPS CEO uses Quantum View; a monitoring system that helps corporate and local stores manages your shipping information securely and efficiently (Compass, 2012). Hour by hour tracking gives UPS a competitive edge over their competitors. There are certain situations where monitoring employees is vital for business growth. What good is it having all this fancy high tech tracking system if there aren't any employees to ship out these products securely? If there was a substantial amount of packages arriving late that were originally shipped out of the San Francisco area for example, UPS could easily track down the exactly store location and even the employees and figure out why this particular problem has occurred. This also corresponds with the topic of actually signing for the package when it is delivered. Most at some point or another have been confronted by a delivery man/woman asking for ones signature for the package that has been delivered. So what exactly is the purpose of signing this electronic pin pad even if the package may or may not be yours? Simple, UPS along with other major shipping companies refuse to drop off a package without a confirmation signature. This is Just another example of great management tactic. Not only does this keep track of packages and deliveries, it also keeps track of the consistency of ones workers (and not just delivery drivers). Employee monitoring is highly important in this type of scenario which is why it is relevant. Management has to deal with situations like this one quite often. When running business problems certainly could have a domino effect. Usually one or more department