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NEW YORK, April 18, 2001—Nearly 80 percent
of major U.S companies keep tabs on employees by checking their e-mail,
Internet, or telephone connections or by videotaping them at work, according
to American Management Association’s annual survey on workplace monitoring
and surveillance. Active monitoring has skyrocketed in recent years, up
from 35 percent in 1997.
Sixty-three percent now monitor workers’ Internet
connections, up from 54 percent a year ago, and 47 percent store and review
employee e-mail, an increase from 38 percent in 2000, the survey found.
Forty percent block Internet connections to unauthorized or inappropriate
sites, up from 29 percent last year.
More than a quarter of surveyed companies (27%) say
that they’ve fired employees for misuse of office e-mail or Internet
connections, and nearly two-thirds (65%) report some disciplinary measure
for those offenses.
“Privacy in today’s workplace is largely illusory.
In this era of open space cubicles, shared desk space, networked computers
and teleworkers, it is hard to realistically hold onto a belief in private
space,” said Ellen Bayer, AMA’s human resources practice leader.
“Work is carried out on equipment belonging to employers who have
a legal right to the work product of the employees using it.”
Although the average percentage of workers with office
e-mail and Internet connections remained relatively constant (65% and
52% respectively, compared with 64% and 48% the previous year), overall
active monitoring grew to 78 percent from 74 percent. The overall figure
includes such measures as storing and reviewing computer files (36%),
video recording of employees on the job (15%), recording and reviewing
telephone messages (12%), and storing and reviewing voice mail (8%).
Other forms of surveillance, including telephone numbers
called and time spent on the phone (43%), logged computer time (19%) and
video surveillance for security purposes (38%) brought the total for all
forms of monitoring to 82 percent, up from last year’s 78 percent
and from 67 percent in 1999.“It’s not just a matter of corporate
curiosity, but very real worries about productivity and liability that
push these policies,” said Eric Rolfe Greenberg, director of management
studies for AMA. “Personal e-mail can clog a company’s telecommunications
system, and sexually explicit or other inappropriate material downloaded
from the Internet can lead to claims of a hostile work environment.”
In previous years the growth in monitoring went hand
in hand with increases in the share of employees gaining access to e-mail
and the Internet. This year, however, the average share of employees with
office connections hardly grew at all, while monitoring those activities
rose by nearly 10 percent.
“It’s important to note, however, that by
far the greater share of this monitoring is performed on a spot-check
basis rather than an ongoing, 24-hour basis,” Greenberg continued.
“And, importantly, 90 percent of the companies engaging in any of
these practices inform their employees that they’re doing so.”
The AMA survey of 1,627 organizations focused on large
and mid-sized firms and does not represent an accurate sampling of U.S.
businesses overall. The sample does reflect practices among its members
and client firms, who together employ over one-fourth of the American
workforce. The sample’s margin of error is 2.5 percent. The AMA questionnaire
was mailed in January 2001 and reports practices in place as of early
2001.
“The lines between one’s personal and professional
life can blur with expectations of 24/7 work week, but employees ought
to engage in some discretion about personal activities carried out during
the official hours of work,” Bayer commented. “The obligations
for respect are mutual. It is up to clear-thinking managers and realistic
employees to leverage the good that monitoring can accomplish and work
to assure those adequate safeguards are in place to avoid abuses.”
American Management Association is the world’s
leading membership-based management development organization. It is distinguished
by the quality of its faculty of global business practitioners, the practical
action-oriented focus of its learning programs and the dynamic, interactive
nature of its courses. AMA offers a full range of business education and
management development programs for individuals and organizations in the
Americas, Asia and Europe. More than 700,000 AMA customers and members
a year, including 488 out of the Fortune 500 companies and many federal
agencies, learn superior business skills and best management practices
through a variety of seminars, conferences and executive forums, e-learning
and self-study courses, books, research studies and onsite and customized
learning solutions.
To view a summary of the 2001 AMA Survey: Workplace
Monitoring & Surveillance results visit the AMA research site at: http://www.amanet.org/research.
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