How Ethical is Office Surveillance?

      Due to the increase in cyberloafing, inappropriate emails, and lawsuits, employee monitoring has become more widespread and much easier and cheaper to use thanks to new and improved technologies. Both employers and employees are concerned with how ethical this surveillance may be. Employers are using these monitoring devices to keep track of their employees productivity, email use, and what websites the employees are viewing during the day. These employees feel that to much of this monitoring is an invasion of their privacy and can cause a conflict between the employer and employee. Therefore researchers have taken this opportunity to understand the ethics of monitoring employees and the current practices that employers are using are being explored and discussed.

     One of the most important steps an employer needs to take is by making ethical standards for all employees and educating all employees on such standards. To understand what is ethical and what is unethical you should understand some key terms. Webster's Illustrated Contemporary Dictionary states the definition of ethics as the basic principles of right actions. Values are things regarded as desirable, worthy, or right, as a belief or an ideal. Morals pertain to character and behavior from society's view of right and wrong. A belief is the acceptance of something as real or actual. Ethics can also be the decision making of actions based on a set of values, morals, and beliefs that a person possesses.

      A good question to ask yourself is, can technology change or influence our sense of values, morals, or ethics? From the information I've looked at they think yes, since technology can influence our actions and behaviors as it already has in many cases. Actions and behaviors, in turn, tend to form our values, ethics and ultimately our character; but this is a question that I believe every employee should ask themselves and so should employers.

      The internet is a huge playground for adults of many different hobbies, so let's explore some of those hobbies. According to a study conducted by ComStore Networks, 59% of on-line sales in 2002 were conducted from the shopper's workplace. Peak Internet access from work occurred between 10 A.M. and Noon. That means many employees are taking advantage of employer-provided access to the Web to conduct distinctly non-work related business. This includes shopping, bidding on on-line auctions, booking travel, visiting chat rooms, writing personal e-mails or just surfing the Internet as a hobby. One company in Seattle, N3H3, which tracks lost productivity, estimates that conducting personal business and surfing at work costs the typical 1000 employee company approximately 11 million dollars a year (Future Magazine 2003) and another study totals this to about 63 billion dollars each for American firms (http://www.huizenga.nova.edu/Jame/articles/employee-monitoring.cfm).

    Many laws have emerged since the internet was first released by the Pentagon in 1984 and the most recent on April 30, 1995 when NSF handed over control of the Internet to private sector. But the internet continues to change, evolve which in turn new laws are created and implemented into the workplace. The internet is an exciting tool that many businesses use daily for everything from inventory, to employee salaries. But the internet is also the same exciting tool that has caused many employees to lose their job over. This is where the issue of surveillance being ethical or not. Is it ethical for employees to constantly monitor all of their employees actions, and when is it to much?

http://www.huizenga.nova.edu/Jame/articles/employee-monitoring.cfm

Literacy of technology in the Workplace

Rapid changes in information and communication technologies have resulted in literacy becoming technological deixis, its meaning continuously changing as new technologies appear and as new investments  for their use are crafted. While literacy has always been destik  in an historical sense, the current period is unique because of the rapid changes in the technologies of information and communication as well as the environment they inspire. As a result, literacy is regularly being redefined within shorted time periods. This takes place as rapidly changing technologies for information and communication transform literacy and as users envision new ways of using these technologies for literate acts, transforming, in turn, the nature of these technologies.

With that said internet literacy is a driving force of the work place for research and development to increase productivity. However when taken advantage and using it for self pleasure to view non-work-related productivity it becomes a negative force to all involved.  Thus being unfair for all parties involved.

Knowing in today's age, schools are making it a higher priority to educate kids technology making them more dependent on them. Do you think it has been a negative force of some sort?     

Sources 
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1011015611937
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/internet-abuse-workplace-problem-58688.html

Internet Monitoring - Employee Defense

 Often times, we accept the technology at face value.  However, there are instances where Internet reporting technology may lead to false accusations.  In some businesses, multiple employees may have access to one computer.  This will definitely present a problem when trying to identify which employee may be violating the company’s Internet use policy. 

Secondly, there are times when the privacy of an employee’s password is compromised.  This could be either due to the employee failing to properly secure his/her password.  At my previous job, I had no less than 5 passwords, and they had to be changed periodically.  In order to remember them, I had to write them down.  Of course, I hid them in the bag I carried, but had I lost the bag, anyone could have gained access to my password.

On key step in assuring you are accusing the correct employee of violating company policy is to investigate his/her search history.  The article cited notes that, “People who abuse the Internet usually have a history of doing so.”  In short, an Internet Use Policy must work in tandem with some sort of Internet reporting technology.  Even then, steps must be taken to verify the employee guilty of abusing the Internet.

http://www.staffmonitoring.com/P32/abuse2.htm

Strategies to prevent internet misuse at work

Throughout the later examine, an extremely vast rate of organizations uncovered that a large number of their workers misuse Internet utilize that reasons diminish as a part of the benefit and effectiveness throughout working hours. Assuming that you're additionally agonized over this issue and need an adequate answer for stop Internet ill-use in the working environment, you've gone to the correct place! Softactivity.com is here to give you propelled neighborhood system observing programming Activity Monitor as a standout among the most capable and practical representative Internet utilization control results available

Tragically, numerous workers utilize their organization's Internet assets for particular needs like sending private correspondence, surfing unnecessary sites, chatting with companions and what is far more terrible offering vital business information and data. Movement Monitor is composed and submitted to secure your business from Internet misuse and abuse. When instituted this holding nothing back one representative Internet utilization control project will begin screening your office machines progressively, furtively recordings all online and disconnected from the net movements of your representatives.

Bosses might as well contribute time preparing workers on what they should or shouldn't do with electronic interchanges mediums and on the best possible conduct and convention for message and Internet utilization. Bosses can institute different sorts of programming to screen and confine representatives' Internet, PC and message use. Representatives do have some security rights. A manager can't, for instance, hack into a representative's close to all personal messages. Thinking that a worker enters a Yahoo message account on a work workstation, the head honcho can't go in and say, 'Because you utilized our Internet framework to gain entrance to Yahoo, we have the right to break into your Yahoo account.' Obviously that acts unbecomingly

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Numerous organizations utilize a firewall to piece unapproved Internet movement, which limits access. The square could be a straightforward one that just screens out time-consuming locales, for example Face book, or it could be one utilizing stringent channels that just permit access to the organization site. A few organizations execute programming that screens different workstations on the system to verify workers are doing true work rather than squandering time.

The primary venture for an organization attempting to control Internet ill-use is to establish worthy utilize approaches for representatives, incorporating what amount of particular time is permitted on the Internet. This might incorporate a message arrangement. Notwithstanding, without electronic screening or supervision, such strategies are just enforceable by the distinction framework.

Sources:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/fact-sheet/stopping-regulatory-power-grabs-protect-internet

http://www.lifescript.com/life/money/work/how_to_stop_internet_abuse_in_the_workplace.aspx

http://www.examiner.com/article/cubicle-101-how-to-surf-the-internet-at-work