These days it’s a given that most employers monitor employee’s email use and their Internet history. However, monitoring tools these days are becoming more sophisticated. New research indicates that more than half of companies are also monitoring what employees say on Slack and Chatter, which are common communication tools.
This research comes from Alfresco, which works more than 1,300 industry-leading organizations, including Cisco, Bank of NY Mellon, Capital One, US Department of Navy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NASA, be more responsive and competitive on their path to digital transformation.
The survey into employer monitoring was drawn from a poll of 307 IT professionals who work at U.S. and U.K. companies with over 500 employees.
Whether this monitoring creates more efficient and compliant employees or creates more disruption and distrust between employees and employee is contestable. The survey suggests that 76 percent of employees say it will have a negative reaction if they knew the level of detail that their company’s capture of their digital activity.
The survey also produced some other findings of interest:
The first is the extent of surveillance, which suggests that 98 percent of companies monitor their employees’ digital activity. The second is the extent of disconnect between what employers are doing and what employees think is happening. Here only 11 percent of firms say their employees are fully aware of what is being monitored.
In relation to this, it stands that a sizeable number (11 percent of workers) are not aware that their company captures their digital activity.
The survey additionally found that:
87 percent of companies monitor email, especially for key words.
70 percent look at worker’s web browser history.
55 percent regularly monitor Slack or Chatter.
41 percent delve into someone’s work voicemail
34 percent will look at Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, especially to see anything detrimental to the company is being posted.
Regulations in relation to employer monitoring vary. In the U.K., for example, employers must tell employees about any monitoring arrangements and the reason for it. Additionally, employers must have a genuine reason to carry out covert monitoring such as criminal activities or malpractice.
