Employers want to be sure their employees are doing a good job, but employees do not want their every movement and thought logged. Technology now makes it possible for employers to keep track of virtually all workplace communications made by any employee. This monitoring includes supervision of telephone conversations, voicemail, e-mails and Internet use. Such supervision is virtually unfettered. Therefore, unless company policy specifically states otherwise your employer may listen to, watch and read most of your workplace exchanges.Federal law has loose regulations on the monitoring of work related phone calls. Companies may monitor employees conversations with clients or customers for quality control. A few states require that a tone or beep must sound to alert the caller that he or she is being monitored. For the most part, employers are allowed to monitor work calls unannounced. Personal calls are a different story. Most calls from the office are screened, so a personal call may be screened accidentally. However, when the supervisor realizes the call is personal, he or she must stop listening to the call at once. The majority of companies also keep records of all calls dialed and the lengths of those calls.More than 20 million people use e-mail in the United States-including 60 percent of employees at Fortune 2000 Companies and 75 percent of respondents to a survey of members of SHRM (McCune 39). Companies are allowed to read electronic and voice mails that travel through their system. The company owns the infrastructure and therefore has the right to examine its contents. People may think that since they have to use a password to access their mailbox the messages it contains will be kept private. Contrariwise, even once a person has deleted a voice or electronic mail, the message is often backed up along with other data from the computer. Several workplace privacy court cases of this type have been decided in the employers favor...
