Employee Surveillance Essay

Submitted By Hello2016
Words: 543
Pages: 3

Employee Surveillance
Group members:
Harris Affi
Embry Kayla
Cummings Catelyn
Paukou Kouame
Introduction
Since the 21st century began, we have seen a tremendous rise in technology use within the workplace, including the use of; computers, cell phones, tablets, and televisions. With this big boom of technology comes great responsibility, especially in the workplace. Employers always want to make sure that their employees are working hard and doing what they are supposed to be doing, not going on social networking sites or playing games. “A 2007 survey 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. And 65% use software to block connections to web sites deemed off limits for employees.” (Clearinghouse 1) Social networking has been a main concern for employers over the past few years. It is looked at to be a leading distraction within the workplace that causes employees to not follow work protocol due to its rapid increase in user visits (see Figure 1 & 2). With all of this technology at the employee’s finger tips, where do we draw the line at? In order to find the answer to that question, we must first understand the laws and methods behind this growing problem as well as what companies have experienced previously when dealing with employee monitoring in the workplace.
I-What is employee surveillance?
Employee surveillance also called employee monitoring is the use of various methods of workplace surveillance to gather information about the activities and locations of staff members.
Monitoring methods are really diverse and we cannot explore them all but here are some examples of methods used: Keystroke logging, Wiretapping, GPS tracking, Time tracking and Internet monitoring, which includes surveillance of employees' web surfing, email, instant messaging and interaction on social networking sites. Concerning software, it exists two specific category: Overt software which are softwares that employee are aware of monitoring them and Covert softwares which are not revealed to employees.
II-Why businesses monitor their employees?
Employers are really concerned about what their employees do