Employee privacy in the workplace

Essay by melissaknottCollege, UndergraduateA-, May 2007

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Employee monitoring is at an all time high now with all the technological advances over the past few years. People can put cameras in almost anything. Voice recorders can be found in something as small as a pen. Employer to employee questions is becoming more personal.

Workplace privacy is becoming a big issue. When employees go to work they are continuously monitored in most aspects of their jobs.

Monitoring varies from internet use to how many breaks an employee takes. Just about all the time the employees don't even know they are being monitored at work.

Why Employers Feel Monitoring is fair and just.

Employers believe it is their right to monitor certain aspects of their employees while at work. Employees should be told not to say or do anything that they wouldn't want the entire world to hear or see. Employers sometimes monitor to enhance employees' productivity or make sure no one is stealing things from the office like staplers or paper, office supplies cost money.

A survey by one U.S. publication tells that just below 60 percent of employers that monitor internet use does it to keep their employees from doing non-job related surfing. Internet use needs to be watched do to the fact the employees could be doing something illegal or damaging to the company and the employer could get the blame because the employee is using the companie's equipment. Internet pornography use in the worplace has not been found to be very common but in 1997 "a department of National Defense employee was fired for distributing child pornography over the internet using D.N.D. resources." (Rolnick, 1995)Employers need to monitor in case they have important trade secrets they do not want their competitors to get a hold of. For example, a special recipe or an important invention...