Remember 1984? That's the book, not the year. George Orwell's book gave us the term, Big Brother, and the phrase, "Big Brother is Watching You." Well, it's come to pass in ways that we could hardly have imagined.
According to the American Management Association more than 75% of big corporations do some kind of electronic surveillance on the people who work for them. 63 percent of them monitor Internet connections. 43 percent track telephone use. And just about 20% check on computer use, such as who is logged on or keystroke counts.
This is the kind of thing that gave Big Brother a bad name. When Orwell published his book, though, the scary thing was having the government watching your every move. Well, while we were looking that way, Big Brother, the corporation, snuck up behind us.
Survey results like this are usually the cue for the privacy zealots to ride in on their high horses and start making noises about all workplace surveillance. They usually ignore the perfectly good reasons why a business should monitor what their employees do. "And what might those be?" I hear you cry!!
Corporate liability is one. In this age where the great American response to just about everything is going to court, companies want to make sure they're protected. So they monitor emails and other behavior looking for things like sexual harassment.
The results show up in the news. Dow Chemical fired fifty folks for swapping dirty jokes via email. Xerox fired forty, and the New York Times twenty-three for the same kind of offenses. Until folks learn that what's not acceptable in the lunch room is also not acceptable online, companies will feel the need to monitor communication to protect themselves from lawsuits.
This monitoring is a double-edged sword, though. The same files that the company uses to prove its disciplinary case can also be used by a plaintiff's attorneys.
Companies are worried about productivity in today's competitive world. Many of them see close monitoring of work as the way to improve things.
This isn't really new. In the days when secretaries actually took shorthand, their work was often measured by the minute. Cyclometers have measured "keystroke productivity" for years. And don't forget all those calls that "may be monitored or recorded for quality control purposes."
The bosses who go for this tight electronic surveillance of work are usually the Theory X types who believe that people will slack off unless you watch them every minute. From their perspective, electronic surveillance of the work is a big productivity booster.
There's only one problem. There's virtually no research on the effects of electronic monitoring on workers who do anything requiring thought or creativity. We do know a couple of things, though.
There have been several studies of communications and clerical workers that seem to suggest that electronically-monitored workers experience higher levels of depression, tension, and anxiety. They have more health problems than un-monitored employees; and, guess what, lower levels of productivity.
Companies are also worried about folks sharing confidential information with people outside the organization. And well they should be. An NFO survey in 1999 of folks who use the Internet for business purposes found that a fifth of them actually admitted to sharing proprietary information about their company while they were online.
What's a company to do? Start by developing a policy that tells folks what they can and can't do. Tell them what the consequences are, and how you're going to monitor their behavior.
Don't underestimate the stickiness of some issues here. It's real clear, for example, that work done and filed on company computers is company property. It's equally clear that using that should be for work only, although most folks will do some work of a personal nature there, too. That's likely to increase.
There are two big trends in the workplace that have an impact here. The first is that we have more and more situations where people work in multiple places with a mix of equipment. They might be using their own laptop from home to do some work for the company.
At the same time, this inter-weaving of life and work for many people means that time needs to be taken during the day to do some of the things that used to be possible on their own time. Workers might have to make arrangements for childcare or follow-up on auto repairs or any number of things that have to be done from work, because work demands the time that it does.
Once you've got a policy, publicize it well and often. This is the kind of thing that tends to drift into the rarely visited back room of consciousness.
The Elron Company, which makes surveillance software, conducted a survey in 1999 where they asked executives whether they had an acceptable-use policy for their Internet use by employees, and whether they told employees about it. Close to 90% said they had such a policy and told their employees about it. But, when Elron asked the employees, only about a third said that any kind of policy was in place and disseminated.
Part of this is the great corporate game of having folks sign off on things that they don't actually read and couldn't possibly remember, but we need to do better. We may not have to go as far as the Xerox Corporation. At that company, a giant notice flashes whenever an employee signs on to the Net. It reminds the employee of the company policy and admonishes them that only work is permitted on the company computers
Enforce your policy, but fairly and humanely. This will become even more important as life and work continue to interweave.
Then, go back frequently, at least once a year, to determine if the policy needs to be revised. Look for changes in technology, but look for changes in the law and court rulings, too. This interconnected world we're in has us reviewing all kinds of issues. The definition of privacy, itself, will probably undergo a bit of revision in the next few years. Fix your policy if it needs fixing.
The question isn't whether businesses should monitor employee behavior. The question is how it gets done.
Do it right-openly and fairly-and it can be part of a great working environment, one were morale is high and productivity is up. Do it wrong, and it could leave you with profits spiraling down the drain, and big attorney's bills.
This feature appeared on 30 July 2001
