One-Third Of All Companies Wasting Money On Email Monitoring
from the pointless dept
While studies have shown that spying on workers tends to make them less productive, that hasn’t stopped approximately 1/3 of all US companies from employing email monitoring tools. 43% of those companies employ staff to check outgoing emails. This seems like quite a waste. While there are some times when it makes sense to monitor emails (or it’s required by law), most of the time, this seems like a complete waste of money. Not only are you upsetting workers and decreasing productivity, the benefits are pretty hard to spot. The number of “problem” emails tends to be incredibly low. If someone really wants to send out inappropriate emails, they’re going to figure out some other way to do so, such as via a free webmail account somewhere. Yet, the companies are buying up expensive tools and hiring staff to watch just in case they catch the one or two problematic emails that go over the corporate network.
Comments on “One-Third Of All Companies Wasting Money On Email Monitoring”
missing the point
People know that a company is operated by human beings. Yet somehow when it fails to behave like a well-oiled machine and instead becomes an object lesson in the corruptiveness of power, they are shocked. The email tracking isn’t there to help good employees toe the line. It is there to collect handy excuses for firing someone you already want gone, just like web monitoring. The idea is to deter those fired from becoming litigants. If you don’t know why you were fired, you might sue, thinking it might have been discriminatory and hoping for a settlement. If you have been presented with your own non-work-related email about Mrs. Field’s Cookies or your questionable surfing patterns, you’d have to leapfrog your conscience to go to court and your chances would shrink.
However, with worms hijacking the internet capabilities of computers, the question arises: could it be possible to bring this as a defense in court?