Watch Out! Big (Boss) is Watching

It looks like the new wave of paparazzi fever has taken over employers. According to the "2005 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey" released last month by the American Management Association (AMA), employers are increasingly using technologies ranging from GPS to the common phone to monitor employees -- and even fire them. Yes, it seems voyeurism is the new black in the growingly colorful spectrum of grounds for termination in corporate America.

According to the study, which involved 526 US companies, employers are using the following means to play the role of Big Brother:

• Internet, Email, IM and Blogging: A whopping 76 percent of employers monitor employees’ Web site connections; 26 percent have fired workers for misusing the Internet, and 25 percent have terminated employees for email misuse (55 percent of employers read and save your emails!). What’s more is that 42 percent of employers have already developed policies regarding instant messenger use. And, as one Google ex-worker experienced, companies aren’t gun-shy about firing employees for blogging.

• Telephones and Cell Phones: Six percent of companies have fired employees for misusing office telephones, and 22 percent have formally reprimanded employees who abuse phone privileges. But what is really surprising is that 27 percent have policies in place governing cell-phone use in the office, and 19 percent use their company policies to “help control the capture and submission of images via camera phones.”

• Video Surveillance: The percentage of companies using video to monitor employees (to counter theft, etc.) has increased from 33 percent in 2001 to 51 percent in 2005.

• GPS and Smartcard Tracking: While GPS use is still new to employers, 5 percent are already using it to track employee cell-phone use. The use of smartcards is still popular, with 53 percent of companies using them to track employees.

There probably isn’t an immediate need to panic, default to paranoia mode or rip off your shirt, run to your boss and yell out, “you can’t handle the truth!” But keeping these stats in mind as you peruse the Web in your downtime is probably not a bad idea -- at least until we figure out a way to balance out employers' hyper-security sensitivity with our need for privacy.

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