Employee Monitoring and Ethics

More advanced technologies that make it possible to monitor employees in the workplace have led to controversies on both legal and ethical grounds. Employers can now easily monitor emails, Internet usage and sites visited, and keystrokes, as well as use GPS systems to track employees’ movements throughout the day. At one end of the spectrum is the employer who claims that monitoring not only improves productivity but is a legal necessity that assists in keeping the company from becoming legally liable for employees’ misuse of technology. Employees, on the other hand, want their privacy protected, and many believe that it is more a matter of them not being trusted. In this paper, an examination is presented that describes various forms of workplace surveillance and monitoring, viewpoints of both employers and employees, policies that companies have implemented, and the ethical and legal implications of such policies.