Sunday, October 12, 2008
Employee Monitoring
These days, employers keep monitoring their employees in order to increase the productivity and the efficiency of their employees. This term is called as employee monitoring. There are many ways to monitor the employees, especially with the help of vast development of computer technology. Some of the examples are telephone monitoring and computer monitoring. As we live in the world of capitalism and to sustain the M-C-M' paradigm, employee monitoring is the best way for the capitalist to ensure that the process of profit-making keep going in every seconds. Every minute spent against the completion of the target is reducing profits and increasing costs. Sometimes, it is true that the employees are constantly wasting their precious time during work time to do unnecessary things instead of doing their jobs. Yet, the employers are not supposed to keep track of them at all times. Humans cannot do work constantly without rest. For instance, the movie entitled Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin might be the best way to illustrate this situation. At one point, Chaplin was taking a short rest in the toilet, but his employer scolded him and directed him to resume his work. Is having a short rest during workday, a wrong thing to do? Yes, I agree that employee monitoring is fundamental to maximize the productivity of the workers and the good quality of products. Nevertheless, according to Baase, employee monitoring diminishes the sense of dignity of the workers as they feel like they are being treated like machines, not humans. Therefore, employee monitoring might destroy the employees' confidence, causes stress and boredom. Eventually, this will reduce workers' commitment to do a great job and hence, reduce the quality of the product made by the company.
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I agree that employee monitoring is essential for the well being of a large corporation. People tend to get off task several times during an eight hour work day, which is why several companies strictly enforce what sites their employees may go on at work. Sites like Facebook and Myspace are sites that are very rarely accessible on a computer within the walls of a large corporation. I am not sure if this is true with all companies, but from my personal experience Merrill Lynch strictly prohibits "off task web browsing". This type of monitoring I agree with, but monitoring to the extent of following an employee on a break, or monitoring the bathroom seems to me as invading one's privacy. Monitoring that makes someone feel stressed seems to me as unethical or like some form of harassment. If I were an executive of a large business I would make sure that all of my employees were comfortable in every way possible. It is common knowledge that a person that is not stressed is more productive in a work environment, than a person that is stressed. That is why companies like Google are the most sought out companies by workers. Google makes their employees feel at home. Companies should not be feared by their employees, they should feel welcomed. That is why I truly believe that employee monitoring can be both helpful and unhelpful for the well being of a company.
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