Monitoring Employee Use of Internet: Employer's Perspective

As I read the Philippine Daily Inquirer in it's issue, " Monitoring Employee Use of Internet: Employer's Perspective ", page B2-3, dated January 25, 2010, I had found out the statistical survey of employer's perspective with regards to the monitoring of their employees in using Internet technologies. Among 112 organizations being surveyed, it was about 65% of these organizations reported that they allowed their employees to have an Internet access. However, there was a monitoring and reviewing of contents or sites being visited by the emloyees. Furthermore, some employers of these organizations restrict and implement policies to their employees in using Internet technologies such as email, instant messaging, and electronic searching. Thus, its almost a half being reported that they had already disciplined their emloyees for improper use of Internet and 28% for improper use of email. There were more employees having formal reprimands compared to dismissals.

In line with this is the issue of privacy.

Privacy is the right of individual from public disclosure. It is the state where individual's life is away from publicity. A privilege where we can exercise to hide our embarassment, and to protect from intrusion of one's solitude. In the otherhand, there are some instances that the privacy of a certain individual should be unvieled in order to monitor malicious actions performed by the person that may somehow lead to any distruction or accident that can damage the life of others. In regards to the article stated above, business or organization has the right to check and monitor their employees' actions pertaining to business. It is the responsibility of the employer or top management to do these things. Since they're dealing with business matters, employees should act properly to maintain the reputation of being a good organization. It is an unethical manner for any employee to do things such as accessing pornographic or social networking sites, mailing to a friend or relatives for non-important matter electronically while there are more works to do, or chatting with foriegner during working hours with in the workplace. Thus, to avoid these events to happen, it is better for the organization to check their employees' Internet usage in order to be properly guided. Lastly, since employees are in the business, they should work purely for business.