Employees' Internet Usage in Workplace: To Monitor or Not To - Essay Example

? Employees’ Internet Usage in Workplace: To Monitor or not to The use of monitoring software and products by employers to monitor their employees’ network usage especially those activities that are not related to work has attracted a strong debate mostly based on ethics and management for quite some time now. With both the defending and opposing sides having strong reasons, choosing to allow employees’ internet usage without the monitoring products and software or otherwise has become a daunting task for an individual granted the responsibility of making the decision. (Murugan, 2004) A decision can however be reached based on certain factors. Most people responsible for making the decision such as managers would analyze the cost associated with the computer surveillance against the financial loss of wasted time before making a decision on whether or not to monitor employee’s internet usage at work. Ignoring the ethical part of the issue, most employers choose to monitor their employee considering the fact that the time wasted by the employees for personal interest at the organizations expense is far much of a loss of which they feel a strong need to contain. Other employers choose not to monitor their employees’ internet usage not based on ethics but on the necessity to cut back on their technology cost. (Anandarajan, 2004) Ethics and management are the two major deciding factors on the issue at hand. Personally, being responsible for making the decision on whether or not to limit the employee’s internet usage, I would choose to monitor and limit the internet usage among the employees. There are many reasons as to why I would choose employee surveillance on internet usage at the work place. Weighing management against ethics on the issue of employee surveillance, management outweighs ethics since the primary role of an organization is productivity and the need to protect the organization’s assets including network, data and equipment. Management ensures high productivity among the employees while eradicating any huddles that may hinder or reduce the productivity of an organization. (Anandarajan, 2004) In order to achieve this goal, management therefore calls for employee monitoring on the internet usage in order to ensure that no valuable time as well as the organizations resources such as the internet is wasted on personal interest of the employees thereby ensuring high productivity. Matlby states that monitoring employees’ internet usage has become a major weapon in fighting the battle against lost productivity. (Murugan, 2004)Management seeks to reduce the productivity losses associated with employee internet abuse and misuse. Most of the time employees misuse the internet for personal use like online games, shopping and as worse as pornography. Averagely, one to two hours a day is spend by employees on the internet for personal use while at the workplace. Personal use of the internet by the employees may range from as wide as gambling pornography access to playing online games. Some tasks like online shopping and banking, though innocent, are still personal and have the same effect just like the other tasks. An organization’s computers and network are some of the fixed assets used by the organization to ensure production and hence profitability. The employer therefore has the right to ensure that these assets are properly used by the employees especially along the line of production and not otherwise. Employees’ internet usage monitoring is one way to ensure that no misuse of an organization’s time and resources for personal task occur within the work place. Choosing not to monitor employees’ internet usage has proven to be very expensive to a lot of employers given the fact that a lot of organization’s time and resources are wasted to misuse and abuse of the internet in work place for personal task by the employees. It presents a destruction which significantly impacts the performance and productivity. (Murugan, 2004) There are several disadvantages of allowing unlimited internet access to the employees given the challenges associated with it. It is not pleasing and definitely not profiting at all when an organization’s time and resources are used by the employees to conduct non-work related task online. The non-work related tasks carried out by the employees online at work places cuts on the business time and resource and thereby reducing the productivity of an organization. (Anandarajan, 2004) Furthermore, they divide the employee attention leading to less concentration on output hence poor performances. They act as destruction to the employee leading to employee’s partial commitment to their work which in turn limits the organization from maximum productivity. Besides time and productivity loss, organizations face a lot of other challenges due to internet misuse and abuse by the employee when not properly monitored. According to Murugan, there are security threats associated with abuse and misuse of an organization’s internet by the employees. Hackers or harmful applets can get access to an organization’s network through the unsecured website visited by the employees. This puts an organization at a risk of losing important and even sensitive information regarding the organization and even the employee to the wrong hands such as hackers who can use the information in a way that degrades the organizations’ reputation. (2004) In addition, there are legal repercussions associated with employee misuse of the internet especially when dangerous or objectionable material is introduced to the organization’s environment. Lastly, employees’ personal internet use clogs up the network thereby limiting bandwidth and slowing down the organization’s operation leading to loss in production. Generally, inappropriate internet usage by employees in workplace has a net effect of damaging an organization’s productivity by reducing revenue while increasing costs and exposing the organization to unwarranted litigations. Employees’ internet usage monitoring has its advantages as well as its disadvantages which must be considered before a decision on whether to or not monitor the employees’ internet usage in workplace is made. Based on management the advantages outweigh the disadvantages when ethics is placed aside. There are a few benefits associated with employee surveillance on internet usage in workplace. Monitoring helps an organization to protect its assets which includes network, equipment and data which are the center of operation of most organization. Any damage to these assets can result in to serious setbacks and legal consequences. Improved productivity of an organization is associated with monitoring employees’ internet usage. It ensures that employees spend more time working and considerably less time on personal tasks on the internet while at the same time reducing cost associated with employee misuse of internet. Increased security and better risk management comes as advantage to monitoring employees’ internet. With the help of the monitoring software and products, the employer has the ability to put restrictions to potentially risky site and thereby reducing the chances of attack from such sites. Monitoring employees’ internet use at workplace has some legal issues which I would consider before implementing the decision to monitor the employees. Most people who are against it have always based their argument on ethics claiming that it is an inversion of employee privacy. I would be wise to adopt a policy that informs the employees that states the circumstances under which they would be monitored. To be on the safest legal ground while monitoring the employees I would choose to monitor on for sound and business related reasons. Work cited Anandarajan, Murugan, and Claire Simmers. Personal web usage in the workplace: a guide to effective human resources management. Hershey, PA: Information Science Pub., 2004. Print. Top of Form Bottom of Form Read More