An increasing number of companies are monitoring employees’ e-mails for a good reason and with impressive results. It seems this invasion of workers’ personal space might reduce companies’ risks for financial scandal.
One of the results of this tightening-up is a closer watch over employees and the information they share in the course of doing business. Thus, one survey found that 93 percent of companies have formal electronic communication retention and review policies.
The same survey – conducted by Fortiva, a company that provides secure e-mail archiving – also found that of those companies with such policies, 63 percent said that e-mail surveillance has improved their ability to see exposure to risks as a result of employee communications. As a result, 26 percent of companies said they have fired employees as a result of information they discovered through e-mail surveillance.
Companies seem to be achieving the intended results. Employees appear to be more aware of the risks inherent in e-mail and subsequently are monitoring themselves. 83 percent of companies say they do not prohibit employees from sending or receiving personal e-mails on the companies’ systems. Yet, 79 percent of businesses believe e-mail monitoring is deterring employees from sending or receiving e-mails that violate corporate rules and policies.
Extract from Richmond.com
This blog site has been created to discuss the use of email monitoring and email filtering in the workplace.
I would like to hear your personal or professional views on the monitoring of email communications when adopted within an organisation.
This will be an open discussion to try to get different views from employees, administrators, middle management and company directors.
If you can touch on issues such as:
- How monitoring may affect staff morale and performance?
- Your rights to personal communications (maintaining your rights to privacy within the workplace, aka, the US/EU law on maintaining your rights to private life)
- When should email monitoring be adopted within an organisation?
- What is good about email monitoring, and in what circumstances?
- What is bad about email monitoring, and how can it be implemented better?
- Examples in the use of over-invasive email monitoring methods
- Do you agree or disagree with the guidelines and national regulations governing the monitoring of emails within the workplace?
- What are the alternatives to email monitoring (e.g. user education, better policy setting)
You can add any other relevant topics/points into the discussion.
If you wish to have your say then feel free to add your comments to this blog post. I would love to hear your view on this topic.
Please do not list any company, vendor or product names (or other identifiable information). If you do so, then your comments will be deleted and your opinions will not be read.
Written on 03 October 2006
by Dicontas Blog Admin under
Email Monitoring, Stories, Surveys
with
Tagged with business_email, business_operations, email_communications, email_filtering, email_management, email_monitoring, employee_productivity, ethics, legal_compliance, management, policy, privacy, staff_monitoring, staff_morale, staff_performance, training, user_education
The introduction of email has brought many benefits to organisations. One main benefit is having the capability to monitor email use by capturing communication metrics through which companies can then act in producing usage policies and provide education to try and reduce wasted resources and improve employee productivity. However, email monitoring also has complex ramifications on the organisation and on its workforce in terms of maintaining a balance between the protection of the employer and for its employees.
In other words, getting the right balance between allowing the organisation to continue business operations and not upsetting staff by invading their privacy rights or by using over-invasive monitoring methods that may affect staff morale and performance. Careful consideration and planning by both management and staff representatives is needed to evolve corporate policies to maintain this correct balance.
Written on 24 September 2006
by Dicontas Blog Admin under
Email Compliance
with
Tagged with business_operations, communication_metrics, compliance, corporate_governance, corporate_policies, email_management, email_monitoring, employee_productivity, ethics, privacy, staff_morale