Employers want to be sure that their employees are performing their duties, but employees want to have a bit of privacy and not have their every sneeze or bathroom break monitored. This is the conflict of workplace monitoring.
Technologies today allow employers to monitor almost every aspect of their employee’s job including the time he, or she, arrive to the office, telephone use, Internet use, computer terminals, and voicemail. This kind of monitoring is virtually unregulated, therefore, unless it is stated in the company policy, an employer has the right to listen, watch, and read most an employees workplace communications.
The e-mail policy at Dell Services Federal Government (DSFG) is lax, whereas, the company would like the majority of communication to be work-related; employees are allowed to communicate with others for personal use as well. This policy is covered in our handbook, it simply states that if one wishes to keep information private do not store or transmit information on company systems. Private e-mail accounts have been blocked from our server so use of personal e-mail is not permitted.
Similar to the e-mail policy, the company wants the internet to be used majority for work-related business. However, short personal business such as paying a bill, making a purchase, locating something, or other small personal business is permitted. During the employees lunch hours, all are allowed to surf the net and visit networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. There are a few sites blocked that employees are not allowed to access such as Xbox.com (one of the competitors of Dell), all personal e-mail accounts (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and etc.) and all obscene and offensive sites are strictly forbidden. The company would like that all personal use be limited.
Telephone monitoring, conversations can be recorded by a device called a pen