ALT-5 Should Employers Monitor Employees Internet use – No
Most employers monitor their employees' internet use these days, to some degree or another. In some cases, it seems appropriate, but in most, it is a blatant method of micromanaging.
By choosing to monitor the internet use of their employees as a regular course of events, employers show that they do not trust the people that they have hired to work for them. If you have to document every single thing that your employee is doing, why did you hire them in the first place? Good employees should be capable of working on their own with little supervision, and by implementing policies that monitor internet usage, an employer is basically saying that close, almost Big Brother-like supervision, is necessary to ensure that work gets done. This is taking the trust and professionalism out of the equation right from the start.
Having a constant policy of internet monitoring also makes it clear to employees the expectation that people will abuse the responsibility given to them when they work independently. Rather than allowing employees to show what they can do, policies such as this make it clear that the employer is expecting that their staff is going to play around on the computer and waste the company time, something that is so inevitable that it must be stopped before it begins. It also makes employees feel like they are constantly being watched, which can lead to resentment if someone is overly afraid to do simple things like check their personal email in case the company will consider that inappropriate.
Finally, employees are generally more productive when they intersperse short breaks throughout their workday. By allowing employees the freedom to feel comfortable checking email or other personal inquiries online throughout the day, employers can actually be fostering a more efficient and happy staff. If someone was abusing this right and doing nothing but surfing online all day, it would be noticeable without the company actually having to closely monitor their usage; there is a huge difference between the quantity and quality of work that someone can get done in between browsing websites for eight hours, and the quantity and quality of work that someone will produce if they are merely taking short breaks throughout the day to take their mind off of things for a few minutes.
In general, by knowing what kind of output an employee is producing, an employer can know whether time is being wasted constantly on personal internet usage throughout the day without constantly monitoring use. Something as simple as red-flagging certain amounts of bandwidth, types of websites (for example, pornography), and having a good idea of what your employees are accomplishing would be much simpler, and less invasive, methods of knowing whether or not your employees are managing to do their jobs properly.
