As an employer there are times when you might be torn between what is ethical and what is mandatory of your role as the overall supervisor for your employees. This is especially so when it comes to monitoring the activity of your employees on the internet during the working hours. Whether or not you monitor their activities on the internet it is important for you to understand the importance of doing this and then weigh that against the moral obligations of your position and decide how to execute your actions.

Moral argument

There are a number of proponents of the moral aspect of monitoring your employees’ online activity, of which their arguments do hold and make a lot of sense. This is especially so if the employees are simply chatting or socializing with their friends and family, or sharing personal mails. Well, morally it would be inappropriate for you to literally go through such because it is an invasion of privacy in some way. There is no harm when employees go online during their free time, but what if this is happening during their work time? Does that raise a problem?

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Well, you try not to be dictatorial and as such you might choose to look over a number of such coincidences. In view of the moral aspect still, what happens when your employees are leaking confidential information about your company to competitors in favor of an opening at the same company or some other benefit?

In such a case therefore, the morality code of conduct is breached, and as a result, you should be within your right as an employer to take precautionary measures to ensure that the foundation upon which your business is built remains as solid as possible, and if monitoring employee activity is the way to go, then why not give it a try?

It is essential to monitor internet usage More than 75% of companies in the US do monitor the internet activity of their employees, and it is understandably so. Competition is rife and we have lots of people who look for the slightest idea that could give them an edge in the market.
It is important to consider the fact that the employees are being paid to do their job in your premises, and for the same reason, the internet usage is meant to be for company services.

The fact that the employees are free to use the same resources for their personal effects is simply a bonus that out of moral responsibility they get to share as members of the same firm. Therefore the one thing that would be expected of an employee is to act with due diligence and maintain the code of conduct with due respect to the goals and objectives of the company.

Protect intellectual property

A number of employees might not even know that they are committing a mistake until they are in the thick of things. Internet usage at the work place is bound to come under attack from hackers and other people who are interested in the data emanating from the company. Therefore it is important for you to carefully monitor such usage.

You also dun the risk of virus attacks on your database and you could have your servers crash or invaded and as a result risk the loss of useful information, or have them leaked to the public domain. Some of these mistakes might be innocently carried out, but then again it might not be easy to tell the difference between an innocent mistake and a carefully crafted mistake that is bound to cause you a lot of damage.

Besides, it is a lot easier and cheaper to monitor the employee activity on the internet than you would have to clean up the mess caused by an invasion of your intellectual property.

Author Bio: The article is being authored by Michael Clark. He is a regular contributor at many sites. He is working for a site offering Decision Desk application tracking software which is very much beneficial for tracking.

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