Monitoring employees, to what extent is it ethical?

**3Six** · February 4th, 2010, 07:41 AM

I know that the law varies from country to country but an issue has come up at my brother's business where there may be a lot of abuse by the employees in terms of wasting time on facebook type sites, sending personal emails, even downloading files!

To what extent would you say it's okay for an employer to log/monitor employee activity? Keyloggers okay? Someone would need to read employee emails to know if they were personal or business. Is that okay considering that no personal emails should be sent from the company's PCs?

**fidodown** · February 4th, 2010, 02:17 PM

I wouldn't want boss reading my private email even if they are during work hours. How can he tell if I did in my lunch break?

**tke71709** · February 4th, 2010, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by fidodown

I wouldn't want boss reading my private email even if they are during work hours. How can he tell if I did in my lunch break?

You're using a company PC to access your e-mails, hence it doesn't matter if you do it before work, on your lunch, or after work.

**ClaytonL** · February 4th, 2010, 03:07 PM

I think I'd gauge my employees on their performance, not how they spend their time.

**tke71709** · February 4th, 2010, 04:05 PM

Never said I would gauge them that way just saying that you're on their equipment so expect anything you do to be monitored, saying you did it on lunch is not a valid excuse to anyone who would actually take the time to monitor you.

**daveslutzkin** · February 4th, 2010, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by 3Six

I know that the law varies from country to country but an issue has come up at my brother's business where there may be a lot of abuse by the employees in terms of wasting time on facebook type sites, sending personal emails, even downloading files!

To what extent would you say it's okay for an employer to log/monitor employee activity? Keyloggers okay? Someone would need to read employee emails to know if they were personal or business. Is that okay considering that no personal emails should be sent from the company's PCs?

Nope. Not because it's not ethical, particularly - you should tell them you're doing it, but if you do that then it's perfectly ethical.

But I don't think it's a useful thing to do. My personal preference is to judge employees on how much work they get done rather than on how much they "waste time". If they're not getting enough work done then have the conversation. On the other hand, if they're spending all their time on Facebook but continually hitting targets, what do you care?

**benitez17** · February 4th, 2010, 07:54 PM

I think the main ethical issues with monitoring employees are making sure that they are aware of the extent of the monitoring activities (web surfing, email reading, keylogging, etc.), and making sure that the information gathered via monitoring is handled properly. At my office, we have a policy where casual personal web use is OK, but we know all web activity is monitored and all activity on our PC can be monitored via remote screen capture. However, what isn't clear is what is done with the logs or files that could contain personal data, especially since our IT staff has recently decided that it is a good idea to intercept all ssh traffic and issue self signed certificates to employee PCs.

**3Six** · February 5th, 2010, 05:38 PM

Judging on work is all very good.

Would you maintain that approach if your static IP was blacklisted in spamhaus? If your subscibers' mail wasn't getting through? If your ISP sent you a warning for illegal downloads?

Where do you draw the line between sending the odd personal email and using company email addresses for personal mail, signing up for free offers with the company email address (therefore attracting spam), sending personal mail that may contain objectionable material, sending large quantities of mail?

**ClaytonL** · February 5th, 2010, 07:33 PM

That seems to be a very different problem from the wasting of time on facebook originally mentioned.

Whatever you do, make sure your employees are aware of what you're doing. Also, realize how these changes effect your relationship with your employees.

**3Six** · February 6th, 2010, 04:50 PM

Of course he'll circulate rules first and give employees a chance to clean up their act. It hasn't reached the stage described in my last post yet but it seems inevitably headed that way, as it would in any company with a large work force that doesn't keep a tight rein on internet usage.

My advice to him was that nothing should be off-limits - from key loggers to reading personal mail. Bung all of it in the rules and then you have a full set of tools at your disposal when it comes to protecting the company's interests.