The debate over monitoring employees

Your company supplied you a laptop you can use at home. Say you are using it to watch movies on Netflix. Should your company be allowed to track which movies you viewed? Perhaps you do much of your work on a company-provided iPad. Should your company be allowed to track the Facebook posts you are making on it during your off-hours?

Privacy matters

Thomas Claburn, editor-at-large with InformationWeek, recently tackled the debate over employee monitoring in a recent online feature. In it, he quoted a wide array of experts, all of whom could understand why employers would like to use new tech to monitor their employees. But these experts also argued that too much monitoring is counterproductive.

High-tech snooping?

But Claburn wrote that it’s naïve to be surprised by this kind of surveillance. Employees, he said, should be expecting their bosses to monitor their computer behavior, particularly when these employees are working on company-provided equipment.

Mixed opinions

For Claburn, monitoring largely comes down to trust. Companies that explain their monitoring policies clearly, will have fewer problems with disgruntled employees. And those that trust their workers to act like grown-ups are frequently rewarded with harder-working and much more loyal workers.