Custom «The Issue of Monitoring Employee Activity» Essay Paper

The issue of monitoring employee activity at work has become very popular with the introduction of new technologies and advanced software systems. Developments in technology have helped companies improve their control measures. Human resources management has obtained very simple yet effective tools for employee performance measurement. Despite the vast amount of tools for employee monitoring, there are no best sellers. Therefore, each country and state applies a set of employee monitoring tools in accordance to the business environment. In Virginia, the aspects of monitoring employee activity at work are tied to employment law and ethical concerns. The key issue is not whether employee activity should be monitored, but the extent to which the employer is allowed to deliberately ignore the privacy of his employees. Some companies in Virginia only apply workplace monitoring tools which enable website, email, and telephone calls control from the side of the company. These issues are clearly explained in most labor contracts, because employer usually bears responsibility for website and email content (in case with corporate networks) and pays for the telephone calls of his employees. And of course, location monitoring tools are present in most companies, as they are useful and allow looking at where the employee is and how he executes his daily tasks at work. According to Federal Law, email monitoring software and tools are already approved within the United States. Virginia legislation is on the way to approve also telephone call monitoring, location monitoring, and visual surveillance. Despite the strength of privacy protection laws, these instruments of facilitating control measures at work are slowly becoming more and more important and popular with the companies of the United States. The greatest challenge in this case is not the efficiency of the tools, but the word of mouth. Many employees tend to avoid being caught with personal stuff as they already know all the instruments which are applied at their workplace. This is the problem which needs to be solved by the companies in the future.