History of Work Force Monitoring and Surveillance Essay

The extremity to which organizations admonisher their employees reflects a lot about how the organization perceives its employees. Workforce surveillance entails email and internet monitoring, gathering of personal data, biometrics, local tracking as intumesce as covert surveillance. Studies show that surveillance has been a part of organizational system since time immemorial and that surveillance stack take expert and social forms. There are varied reasons as to why companies would postulate to monitor their employees (Adams, et al. 200).Technological advancement has over time revealed m both loopholes by dint of which valued company records such(prenominal) as client data can be accessed illegally. On the other hand, the Federal Trade Commission of the join States established the Safeguard Rules that seek to protect client information against any physical and technical threats so to retain confidentiality, integrity and privacy of such data. Most companies thus install s urveillance systems to help them comply with the federal official law since it is hard to trust every employee. Workforce surveillance to a fault helps in protecting the organization against legal liabilities.Monitoring facilitates for the individual trade protection of employees by eliminating or reducing any occurrence of harassment in the model force. Electronic surveillance has for instance enabled organizations to protect their assets, reduce pervert of company resources an in avoiding any legal liabilities. According to a 2001 work place surveillance and monitoring report by the American focusing Association, 82% of organization use electronic surveillance and that close to 14 million employees in U. S are under surveillance (American perplexity Association, 2001). Some legal procedures have been put forward to justify surveillance.The self-abnegation Counsel Journal argues for surveillance by outlining employer rights for monitoring such as work quality use of the emplo yers equipments fraud and theft concerns and the occurrence that the employee is within the company vicinity (Kirstie, 2010). Surveillance could have consequences on employees and nigh of the consequences could be detrimental to the organization. Surveillance can affect the work culture, the wholesome being of employees, productivity, motivation and creativity. However, reasonableness is paramount in the whole deal of workforce surveillance.The question of respect for employee rights to privacy disqualifies surveillance to some extent such that the whole process seems to be unethical. Legal advisors note that it is passing all-important(a) that employees get to know that the surveillance is part of the company routine and that employee consent matter a lot. Reasonable monitoring and surveillance protects important company information, enhances compliance with federal law, protects employee rights, and improves productivity and the work environment. However, it is essential tha t organizations parallelism between their monitoring needs and employee privacy.