The potential survey takers for our survey were limited to those who were employed and used computers on a consistent basis for their work. The people that we surveyed in particular though, were people who worked on computers controlled and monitored by the Department of Defense (DoD). DoD would have to follow the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, whichgave general guidelines that allowed for the monitoring of employees. For those interested in the DoD policies, they can be found at http://www.defense.gov/webmasters. To understand the results of the survey, first here are the questions: 1. Age:
2. How would you rate your own computer literacy: Not very illiterate, Good Enough, Very Good
3. Do you know your employer’s policies regarding the monitoring of you e-mail and internet access? Yes or No
4. Do you know the limitations of your employer in regards of what they can and cannot monitor? Yes or No
5. How important is computer access, more specifically e-mail and the internet, to your job. Not very important, Important, Very Important
6. How often do you visit youtube or social networking sights per day? 1-3, 4-6, 7+
7. How comfortable do you feel using email and the internet on a monitored computer? Not very comfortable, comfortable, very comfortable
8. How do you feel your productivity has changed since access to youtube and social networking sites were allowed? Up, Down, or the Same
9. Do you think you would benefit from restricted e-mail and internet access? Yes or No
80% of those surveyed rated their computer literacy as good enough, but only 60% of those surveyed knew the DoD’s policy on monitoring e-mail and internet access. Of that 60%, only half of them knew what the DoD could and could not look at. That means only 30% of those surveyed knew the limitations, and even though so few knew the limitations, 80% of those surveyed were either comfortable or very comfortable using email and the internet on a monitored computer. 80% said that the internet and e-mail was either important or very important to their job, so shouldn’t more know about what can and cannot be looked at by the DoD? It is surprising that such a high percentage doesn’t know what the DoD cannot look at when a high percentage finds the computer so important to their work.
Another very important question about the use of government computers was the effect monitoring had on their job performance. Since this past April, unclassified government computers are now allowed access to social networking sites and youtube as long as it is done carefully. What we wanted to see was the correlation between this, monitoring, and productivity. What we found was that of the 80% that were comfortable using email and internet on a monitored computer (showing unaffected performance, despite monitoring), 75% said that their productivity was either the up or the same since access was granted to social networking sites and youtube.
In conclusion, it seems that, according to this survey, most know about the policies regarding the monitoring of email and internet, but not the limitations. It also seems as though work performance is generally not negatively affected by the monitoring of employees or social networking sites. Social networking sites do not seem to negatively affect performance and productivity because most of those surveyed did not report their productivity decreasing. In our opinion, in might even increase activity because it allows employees to take a sort of a mental break from working and come back re-energized.
Research done in the electronic monitoring of employees has come to a much different conclusion then the one made by us and our survey. The majority of studies have found that electronic monitoring frequently increases employee stress levels leading to employee job dissatisfaction. Specifically , research done by Rebecca Grant and Christopher Higgins entitled, “Monitoring service workers via computer: The effect on employees, productivity, and service” found that monitoring becomes less acceptable to employees as monitoring becomes more and more pervasive. Employees begin to feel as if the electronic monitoring is acting as their supervisor, even though they feel it cannot handle things as well as a human supervisor could. As a result of this, a feeling of a loss of control by the employee is felt, and those who feel like they have lost control tend not to feel very satisfied with their jobs. Those not satisfied with their jobs, not surprisingly, do not work as well and have low job productivity.
Also found in that same research article was the results of a survey of 1,500 employees in 50 Canadian service firms. What they found was that as the number of tasks monitored by the employer increased, the employees increasingly believed that production was more important to their employer than quality. Their conclusion was that employees may reduce quality unintentionally in their attempt to live up employer expectations.
This research article was published in 1989, much before the popularity of the internet and social networking sites. Even in 1989, the electronic monitoring of employees and its affect on them was an issue. The boom in monitoring technology only foreshadows how much of an issue that this will be now and in times to come. The landmark Supreme Court case Ontario v. Quon gave the upper hand to the employers, but this case will only fuels the argument for employment monitoring and everything affected by it, including productivity.
In the case of Ontario v. Quon, the city of Ontario had provided SWAT team members with alphanumeric pagers after Sgt. Quon had exceeded his allotted usage limit. The city acquired transcripts that provided them with information that Quon had been using his pager for personal usage, and some of the messages he had sent out were sexually explicit. Those who were found sued citing a violation of the fourth amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizures. The Supreme Court found that this search was in fact legal because the search was motivated by legitimate work purposes.
In an HR issues and answers Q&A, from an employer’s perspective, email monitoring is legal as long as you look at only email in storage, not outgoing email. Also, an employer may review its employees’ telephone conversations for business purposes, but may not record private conversations. The federal Electronic Communications and Privacy Act of 1986 does not allow employers to record all personal conversations for later monitoring. Conversations between employees via headsets are also monitored.
A 2008 Q&A with Microsoft also notes a type of monitoring called “activity-centric monitoring” employees are monitored, for example for the number of key strokes they make, which is analyzed against performance
