The Shocking Truth About Employee Monitoring - Is Your Boss Spying On You

Another day at work. You grab your cup of coffee, take a few sips in front of your computer screen, and open your favorite online newspaper. This 15 minute ritual doesn't harm anyone, and it helps you prepare for your hard day's work.

Break time. You run a quick check up on your private emails and order that new book you forgot about last night. Just a quick call home, and you can get back to work.

A few minutes later, you are called to the boss's office. It turns out that your boss installed the latest Electronic Monitoring System without ever disclosing it to you, or any other employee. You are about to be fired.

Can This Happen To You?

The Sarabanes-Oxley Act -- and similar legislation -- has drastically increased the electronic monitoring of workers. If an employee is working in a networked-workplace, the employer can eavesdrop and monitor his computer, including all e-mail communication and Internet activities that most employees consider private -- without receiving the employee's consent (Flanagan, 1994).

Fear of employees spending their working hours surfing through social network sites, communicating with their friends, shopping or playing games (therefore wasting the company's money), has given managers a good reason to turn to EPM systems.

"Electronic monitoring has two basic uses: providing feedback and implementing control" (Jessup, 2002)

What Have The Studies Shown?

Most organizations today use some sort of technology to supervise the activity of workers. Saramanayake (2011) conducted a study on 380 professionals and concluded that employees who believe electronic monitoring helps improve performance are satisfied with their current job. On the other hand, those who think electronic monitoring negatively reflects on their daily work, are dissatisfied with their job.

Saramanayake also noticed that the impact of EPM on job satisfaction has less significance on those professionals who have higher working experience. This phenomenon can be associated with McGregor's XY theory, developed in 1950s.

According to the theory of X, the average person dislikes work and must be controlled. McGregor argues that most people who have relatively little ambition want to be treated this way.

According to Theory Y, working is as natural as playing a game for people who exercise self-control when trying to achieve their goals (Envision, n.d.).

"People who were EM-aware were more task focused than the EM-blind subjects, supporting Theory X. However, EM-aware subjects were generally less satisfied overall than the EM-blind group, supporting Theory Y." (Jessup, 2002:82)

In another study conducted by Oz (1998) on 823 employees, it was noticed that the majority of respondents believe electronic surveillance can lead to awkward tension between workers and managers. Managers favor EPM systems and believe in their ability to reduce stealing and stress in the office. Managers also often consider there is no need to inform the staff when monitoring is being implemented. Workers who participated in this study stated that the use of this kind of surveillance led to a lack of motivation and fear of job loss. It also reduced the variety and clarity of tasks and of gained support.

Irving (1986) reported that employees who are exposed to electronic monitoring experience lack of quality in their work at the expense of being more productive. They also experience higher levels of stress, low morale and lack of quality relationships with colleges and superiors.

Grant (1988) found that employees under surveillance feel the loss of quality is inevitable in order to improve the quantity. More than 75% of observed workers said the volume of production is the most significant factor in their monitoring reviews, while more than half believed they should be offered the possibility to decline surveillance. However, Grant also noted that the more often the system is used, the more likely it is to be accepted by employees.

According to Grant employees are more likely to accept a monitoring system that collects and tracks group performance, rather than individual performance information. Employees also prefer information to be provided only to them and to their immediate supervisor.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Monitoring

Managers implement EPM systems in order to secure confidential information. Also, workers' performance and productivity information recorded by electronic monitoring helps human resources department to make decisions related to employees.

From the employee point of view, however, electronic surveillance includes numerous concerns about privacy and confidentiality.

Electronic Monitoring Pros

Proponents of electronic monitoring systems argue that continuous monitoring is crucial for higher productivity and performance results in today's offices. They argue that surveillance systems allow employers and supervisors to identify, organize and manage information about their employees, as well as the company's financial resources. According to them, an electronic monitoring system can increase performance variability control, performance evaluation and feedback, efficiently manage large offices and establish and enforce labor standards. Regular feedback can meet the needs of workers for self-assessment and reduce uncertainty in performance evaluations (Landy, 1983).

Electronic Monitoring Cons

Despite the potential productivity benefits, the use of imposed surveillance can produce stress among workers, reflecting in the loss of motivation, initiative and finally reducing the quality of work. These consequences will most likely be experienced by people who have difficulty fulfilling the imposed standards.

According to McGregor's XY theory, the highest effects of stress would occur among Y workers, or those who are self-motivating and self-controlling. Forcing strict standards on a 'Y person' and monitoring his or her every click of a mouse might result in the opposite effect.

There have also been concerns raised by employee representatives, government agencies and the public media that some of the monitoring implementations are offensive and represent an attack on the privacy of employees (Anon, 1987).

Privacy has become a problem, especially when workers are not aware they are being monitored. Since employers often do not share information about their employees' performance, but provide false reports, implementation of EPM systems poses a big ethical concern.

The Ideal Implementation of Electronic Monitoring

In order to satisfy the company's interests and employees' rights, an ideal solution would be to implement a versatile electronic monitoring system that would serve as a valuable feedback tool and an unobtrusive control system. This system would consist of three forms of surveillance: Internet usage, EMAIL communication and office phone usage.

In addition, all employees in question should be informed about every form of monitoring that is going to take place. This has proven to have a positive effect on production and solves most of the ethical issues that may arise.

1. Internet Usage

Employers should publish a list of allowed and desirable Internet web sites employees can visit. The list should include web sites that contain training and learning material, as well as material relevant to their line of work.

Secondly, employers should publish a list of 'forbidden' sites, such as social networks, online game sites and news portals.

Finally, electronic monitoring software should be installed on every computer in the office and employees should be notified of surveillance taking place. They should be clear about which internet sites they are allowed and encouraged to use, and which ones are forbidden.

2. EMAIL Communication

There should be several group recipients formed, such as the Sales team, the Development team, the Support team recipient group. Employees should be advised to conduct all their e-mail communication through those groups. That way the responsibility is spread among the members of each group. Ideally, a group leader will be assigned for each group. For example, the development team manager should be in charge of reading all e-mail conversations in the development team group.

Employees should be given right to conduct private conversations through official e-mail, but they should be aware that all their messages are being monitored and therefore advised to leave all personal communication for after-work hours. Since their Internet usage is also being monitored, they should be aware that if they use a third party e-mail address (such as G-Mail), the supervisors will find out.

Office Phone Usage

Employees should use the office phone only for business purposes. They should be aware of monitoring and behave accordingly. Employers, on the other hand, should allow the time and place for employees to engage in private conversations. In order to ensure the privilige is not abused, however, those who regularly extend their breaks to talk on the phone should be reprimanded.

Conclusion

People who avoid their work duties will find a way to avoid them, even if the most rigorous electronic monitoring system is implemented. However, the proposed system will help identify those workers in order for the management board to take appropriate action.

Those who fall into the 'X Theory' group should be motivated to work harder due to imposed control, contributing to overall performance and productivity boost. 'Y Theory' group, on the other hand, should be motivated to express their maximum potential, given the fact that their work is monitored and that their talent will be noticed by the superiors.

How about you? Are you being monitored at work? How does that make you feel? Do you believe monitoring has increased your productivity, or has it constrained and de-motivated you?

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• Adams, A.A., McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora's box: Social and professional issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Anon (1987). 'The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions'. Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States. Washington, DC. Government Printing Office
• Envision (n.d.), Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y [Online]. Available from: http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Theory_X.html (Accessed: 17 November 2013).
• Flanagan, J.A., (1994). Restricting electronic monitoring in the private workplace. Duke Law Journal 43 (6), pp.1256-1281.
• Grant, R.C., Higgins, C.A., Irving, R.H. (1988), Computerized performance monitoring systems: Are they costing you customers?. Sloan Management Review.
• Grant, R. C. Higgins, C. A., (1991), Computerized performance monitors: Factors affecting acceptance. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, pp.306-315.
• Irving, R. H., Higgins, C. A., Safayeni, F. R., (1986), Computerized performance monitoring systems: Use and abuse. Communications of the ACM. pp.794-801.
• Jessup, L. M., Urbaczewski, A. (2002), Does Electronic Monitoring of Employee Internet Usage Work?, Communications of the ACM 45(1), pp.80-83.
• Landy, F., Farr, J. (1983). 'The Measurement of Work Performance'. Academic Press, New York.
• Oz, E., Glass, R., Behling, R. (1998), Electronic workplace monitoring: what employees think, OMEGA The International Journal of Management Science. 27 (1999), pp.167-177
• Samaranayake, V., Gamage, C. (2012), Employee perception towards electronic monitoring at the workplace and its impact on job satisfaction of software professionals in Sri Lanka;, Telematics and Informatics, 29 (2), pp. 233-244

By Ivana Zuber

This article was written by Ivana Zuber – Software Developer, writer, and owner of BloggLess. As a constant learner and an MSc in Software Engineering student, Ivana is always aiming towards new ideas and greater knowledge. When she is not coding, reading, or writing for blogs, you can find her jogging outside, or ‘hanging around’ social media sites.

Images via kozzi.com