Ethics and Legal Aspects of Employee Monitoring

There are many reasons why employers should monitor their employees while they are at work and are using the company's equipment, such as telephones, laptops, vehicles and supplies. Many may feel that they have committed themselves to their company, working hard every day and giving up eight to twelve hours out of their day in lieu of pay. Some feel a sense of entitlement to using company equipment for their own personal use because they feel that "it is the least that they can do" for all of their hard work, loyalty and dedication that have given them. The problem is that they seem to be missing a key issue; it is the company's property and does not belong to them for personal use unless otherwise specified in a company policy or agreement. This ongoing debate between employers and employees has brought circumstances to the point where individuals have been terminated because of this, and have gone to litigation for further involvement, to find out if legally, the company had the right to terminate.

Employers want to ensure that their employees are doing a good job, and at the same time, don't want to be ripped off, have lazy employees loafing while they should be working, find themselves in litigation because of confidentiality issues with clients and ultimately paying for a lawsuit. On the other hand, employees do not want their every move monitored and seem to believe a little personal phone call or using the company car to pick up the kids from little league should not be a problem. They fail to understand that for the most part, monitoring is in the best interest of the company for not only making sure that everyone is actually doing their job but ultimately to safeguard the company.

Since monitoring is for the most part an unregulated area of employee privacy, It is the right of the company to regulate as long as they are not breaking any personal privacy issues such as monitoring an employee while using the bathroom, or are on their own personal device in a designates area and during their break or lunch hour.

According to a 2007 survey executed by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found that "two-thirds of employers monitor their employees' web site visits in order to prevent inappropriate surfing. 65% use software to block connections to web sites deemed off limits for employees a 27% increase since 2001 when the survey was first conducted. Employers are concerned about employees visiting adult sites with sexual content, as well as games, social networking, entertainment, shopping and auctions, sports, and external blogs. Of the 43% of companies that monitor e-mail, nearly three-fourths use technologies to automatically monitor e-mail and 28% of employers have fired workers for e-mail misuse"(privacy rights, 2013).In most cases that an employer-provided work device is loaned to the employee, an employer has the right to monitor that device for any reasonable cause. They may access their computers