Employee Surveillance

[Jeff]

I read an interesting article in Information Week this morning. Titled "Who's Watching Now?" it oulines what employers are doing to monitor employee activity.

They did a survey of 2,540 U.S. business-technology and security professionals, asking "Does your company monitor any of these employee activities?"

• E-mail use - 56%
• Web site visits - 44%
• Phone calls - 41%
• IM use - 34%

If you use IM at work, there's a good chance that your company is monitoring what you do. Now in addition to my old adage... "don't say anything you wouldn't want your mom to hear," you can add "or make your boss frown."

[Jynxed]

In my personal opinion, I think that it is great that they do that. I know that when I go to work I get so sick of people around me using IM's. They know they aren't suppose to, but they do anyway. So , yeah, careful what you say it may come back and bite your behind.

[Tigerblade]

just another example of how connected our world has become... people can't spend a few hours at work without being connected to their friends via IM. i can see using IM as a work resource (like IMing Phil from HR instead of walking two floors down to his office), but if you're using company time to IM your friends... pink slip.

[williamlee]

I totally agree that IMing at work should be for work purposes. although I do not follow this rule but then I work from my own home but.... I did however introduce messenger to a friend who owns a company that had 14 sister plants and told him that this would work great if used properly and once we got everyone on the same page he said it worked great But I did insist he monitor the conversations so personal use would be forbidden. I know companies will monitor their employees use on the messenger but I think a better tool would be to tell them up front thats what they are doing and it isnt for personal use.

[sarahtowny]

In my workplace we are not allowed IM downloads etc, in fact any downloads at all, any emails to friends have to be headed personal, yeah like I do that! But if on lunch hour we can surf the net. Wonder where I go! I used to use meebo for IM during lunch but don't really bother now.

But basically my work is pretty strict but then to be honest when I am there I don't have time..

[kelseyc]

In my previous job, we were allowed to use AIM at work, because we used it to communicate between employees. Our managers and supervisors never tracked our conversations.

However, for managers who want to track employee IM use, the company I blog for, Brosix, has a private IM program that allows approving managers to track and monitor employee's IM use online. For more information, check out Brosix Enterprise Instant Messenger - Secure Corporate Instant Messaging for companies