There have been quite a few blogs already regarding the use of technology to monitor and control employees and chapter 9 mentions this as well. I agree that organizations should have control and should monitor their employees to some extent. I know when I am at work, I usually have my personal email open and I occasionally take breaks and surf the net, read news, chat, pay bills, etc. I also make phone calls and gossip with fellow workers. Likewise, when I am at home I still check my work email and if there are urgent requests I do those at home as well. Organizations should know that this is normal and expected. It's impossible for an employee to work for 8-10 hours a days without doing something personal. After all everyone has lives outside of work! If organizations want employees that are completely dedicated and are willing to put in a lot of hours then these organizations should be willing to trust their employees and accept that they will be doing personal things at work. I feel that monitoring key strokes, recording phone conversations, using cameras, etc. are violating. All that matters in the end is that the work gets done!
3 comments:
I absolutely agree. I think that especially these days many jobs require that you have a computer and the internet. I know that there are some companies that do not allow you to go to any other websites but the company intranet and block EVERYTHING else. I understand that they want to try to avoid employees doing personal business at work but that is really hard to avoid when employees are working 8 – 12 hour days. And just like you said, work and home begin to blend. I too will respond to an email or do a task from home late at night or on the weekends if necessary. If I am doing work on personal time I should also be able to do personal tasks at work, within reason of course. I think that my company recognizes that you will probably get more out of your employees and they will be more productive if you allow them to take little moments to “break” away.
Very true, I agree with your opinion as well. But if we look at it from an employer's point of view we would also realize that employers have to have a strategy to monitor the work done by the employee or to monitor if he or she is not something inside the company that could harm company's reputation or its business. Such as an employee sending out details of a project that his company just got to another competitor so that they can grab it, or providing some confidential information to the outside world. This sort of activities must be monitored but at the same time some easy should be given to the employees as well. The fact that my workplace has blocked Blogger makes me so much furious as I work late hours there and when at the end of the day when I try to work on my own stuff, i am unable to do so. Anyways, in my opinion a balance must be present between the two.
When I first read a journal article about electronic surveillance that mentioned keystroke monitoring, I was shocked and incredulous. Companies actually did that? I've worked for mostly smaller companies that only went as far as checking internet logs, and didn't even bother with that most of the time because management wasn't tech-savvy, and the technical department (usually one guy) had far more things to be concerned with than maintaining surveillance software.
I can see how larger companies could afford the resources to do that, but I'm perplexed as to why, just as I'm perplexed when I come across friends who are asked to log their activities in fifteen minute increments so that their supervisors know exactly what they're spending their time on. If there are productivity issues, then that's one thing, but to require every employee to do that seems like overkill. It doesn't seem as though the companies in those situations believe that their employees are adults and are professionals who should presumably know what needs to be done to get their work done, and when they can afford to take a break and let their mind rest for a bit on other things.
Post a Comment