Is Employer Monitoring of Employee E-Mail Justified?
It is not illegal for companies to monitor their employees’ workplace computer usage. The American Management Association (AMA) conducts a survey each year on electronic monitoring and surveillance. The latest results from 2007 that polled 304 companies are: •68% of employers monitor Internet connections
•65% use software to block connections to inappropriate websites •43% monitor e-mail in which 73% use technology to automatically monitor e-mail and 40% assign an individual to manually read and review e-mail o96% of these employers track external (incoming and outgoing messages) oOnly 58% monitor internal messages
•28% of employers who have fired workers for e-mail misuse cite the following reasons: oViolation of any company policy (64%)
oInappropriate or offensive language (62%)
oExcessive personal use (26%)
oBreach of confidentiality rules (22%)
oOther (12%)
•71% of employers alert employees to e-mail monitoring (AMA/ePolicy Institute 2007 Electronic Monotoring & Surveillance Survey) DePree and Jude endorse employee e-mail monitoring for various reasons. First, it is legal. “As a general rule, when an employee enters the workplace, an employer may monitor and record...
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