| More Firms Will Eye Blogs, E-Mail In '08 |
Investor's Business Daily
Friday December 28, 5:59 pm ET
Morey Stettner
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| In the past few years, workers across America got the memo: Their employer may be snooping on them. Recent events signal that employers will try harder to control employees' e-mail use at work in 2008. On Dec. 21, for instance, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employers can restrict workers from using e-mail for union-related matters. The decision reinforced the fact that companies own their computers and employees lack a legal right to use those devices for certain personal communications. |
| PUBLICITÉ |
| With less chances of privacy at work, employees increasingly realize that Big Brother is alive and well. From indications, this monitoring and surveillance will intensify in the next year. |
| “More than ever, businesses are asking, 'How far can I go?'” said Frederick Lane, author of “The Naked Employee.” “They're seeking new ways to monitor employees for safety reasons — to prevent the kind of workplace shooting incidents that have become more prevalent. They also want to address their legal liability concerns.” |
| Employers have many tools to track their workers, such as installing monitoring software on company-owned computers. These products enable supervisors to track employees' Internet use as well as record every keystroke. |
| Half of employers store and review employees' computer files and 36% track content, keystrokes and time workers spend at the keyboard, according to a 2005 survey by the American Management Association and The ePolicy Institute. The study also found that 55% of employers retain and review employees' e-mail. |
| The snooping often includes all activity over the company's network and allows bosses to read a worker's comments when blogging, instant messaging and participating in online chat rooms. |
| It can extend to recording phone calls, videotaping employees at work and tracking their movements. |
| GPS Checks Coming |
| “GPS (global positioning systems) will become a bigger factor,” said Lane, who is based in Burlington, Vt. ”Employer-provided cars, trucks or cell phones increasingly have GPS installed in them. There's a ton of location-sensitive applications coming down the pike because businesses want them.” |
| Many employers engage in spying as a form of risk management. They don't want workers wasting hours playing online solitaire or surfing the Web for pornography, which can fuel legal claims of a hostile work environment. Moreover, growing concern about security breaches motivates companies to track any release of sensitive material on the Internet. |
| Data transfers pose a mounting problem. While workers who download pirated software onto company computers can trigger a copyright-infringement lawsuit, they also can transfer trade secrets or customers' personal information onto their own laptop to steal data. |
| For many employers, the challenge is to balance their just need to protect confidential data, maintain workers' productivity and prevent workplace violence with employees' privacy concerns. This balancing act will get easier, experts say. |
| “With recent advances in employee monitoring, managers are less concerned about hurting morale,” said Adam Schran, chief executive of Ascentive, a Philadelphia-based software firm. “We'll see a greater comfort level among employees who are being monitored because they aren't being treated like kids. They can go anywhere they want on the Web with no blocking.” |
| For example, Ascentive's BeAware software doesn't stop users from accessing certain Web sites. Instead, it lets managers view staffers' Internet use in real time and be alerted if, say, a worker sends an e-mail to a competing firm. |
| Home PCs Watched |
| Looking ahead, employers will exercise increasing vigilance in patrolling their employees' online activities. |
| Many workers know that they can be fired for sending e-mails, writing blogs or creating other content on their employer-owned computer that violates corporate policy. |
| What they may not realize is that they also can lose their jobs for posting critical comments about their company from their home computer, says Nancy Flynn, executive director of The ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio. She adds that there's a new term, “dooced,” to describe individuals who are fired for criticizing their employers online. |
| “Organizations need to update their e-mail and Internet policy every year,” said Flynn, author of “The ePolicy Handbook.” “Employers must manage new risks that arise from employees' online use including instant messaging, blogging and social networking.” |
The next frontier of employee monitoring will involve biometric devices, Lane says. Such tools use scans of fingerprints or eyes to identify individuals and confirm their whereabouts. He predicts more widespread use of biometrics in the next one to two years.
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| The BeAware Corporate Edition software is available for $89.95 per computer, with volume discounts starting at five computers or more. For more information click here. |
