Keeping A Balance Between Employee Monitoring and Concerns About Privacy

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For the working people of today, there seem to be no boundaries when it comes to the technology they use for their personal use or that which they use for work purposes. Employees now access their work emails and files using their personal devices and make use of work laptops and computers for personal browsing they may have to do. This causes the line to become blurred between what is professional and what is personal, mostly due to the bring your own device policies which has caused employers to further keep a watchful eye on their employees and what they do on their devices.

The monitoring of employee activities on company provided devices and computers are important because employers need to know what these devices are being used for. By doing so, employers will be able to prevent the devices from being abused while at the same time be able to determine whether or not any kind of theft is taking place or conflict of interest. If so, action can be taken prior to any financial loss occurring. These are the views of Ivory Thompson, the operations manager at a monitoring solutions providing company.

It isn’t however only conflict of interest or lack of productivity due to using works devices for personal uses which employers needs to worry about. Employers also need to take into consideration what employees post on their social media account as this too could have an impact on the company’s corporate reputation. Every employee can publish whatever they wish on social networks and it doesn’t matter where they may be posting it from. It also does not matter whether or not what they post has got anything to do with the company they work for or that they aren’t speaking on behalf of the company. They are however representing the company and employer they work for particularly on websites which are business oriented.

The issue is that employees do not like the idea about their bosses spying on their personal gadgets and devices. A number of states have also introduced bills to limit how much access an employer has with regard to the social media accounts of his employees. The legal and appropriate measure through which an employer can monitor the activities of his employees is constantly changing. The best thing to do thus is to have a social media policy which should be provided to all employees along with making use of legal counsel which can be used to advise regarding disciplinary action which may need to be taken with regard to any social media communications of employees.

Employers should thus have a clearly outlined policy of what is and isn’t acceptable and expected of them with regard to the employee’s use of devices provided to them. In this manner, employees will be able to feel safe with regard to the way they use devices and will know for sure that their personal data is kept secure. This will also help in avoiding friction or any legal issues between an employer and his staff.

Author Bio:

Nicki is an expert social experiment analyst and writes regularly for some time. Her work on monitoring application for cell phones has received great appreciation from a reader who turns her keep themselves updated with the latest news.

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