Company management should conduct routine monitoring of all employee e-mail correspondence. Such monitoring will reduce the waste of resources such as time and system capacity, as well as protect the company from lawsuits.Write a response in which you di

While enforcing routine monitoring of all employee e-mail correspondence might reduce the waste of certain resources and protect the company from lawsuits, there are serious implications that such a police may bring forth. These implications aren't just related to an inherent sense of right or wrong, but also to how it would affect such a company in the long-term.

The biggest issue that comes into play when considering the policy is the issue of freedom of rights. Monitoring e-mails can be useful, but to everyone, it is also a restriction of privacy. Perhaps some individuals may feel perfectly comfortable with such a policy, but perhaps others may not. One has to think about what such a lack of privacy would do to the employees' mindset in the long term. Maybe such a monitoring of e-mail may prompt many to activate different email accounts. There are various ways to communicate with others, not only on the web, so many may just find other ways to send their correspondence without being detected in that way. That is, this would be possible if the company actually lets it be known that employees' e-mails will be monitored. If not, then there's no way that others would detect that their "privacy was being invaded". And this is what it comes down to. How well management would feel on doing this is another issue. It comes down to an inherent sense of right or wrong, but ethics are a huge part of our ingrained ideas, and so at the basic level, it's a really significant point. I, myself, think it violates any sense of privacy.

Implementing the policy may also bring about different issues. If the employees are aware that the policy is in place, they may not only try to hide certain activity in the form I discussed above, but many may not feel at ease. They may feel violated, they may feel like they're being denied certain rights. Many might start a backlash towards a policy, and the policy, if being known to employees and potential employees, might prevent many from choosing to work in the company and might motivate others who do work in it already to quit. On the other hand, if the policy is implemented without employees knowing, it may not just bring about internal conflicts within management, but information may be found that may not be of any significance and that may ultimately bias management. For example, management may find out their employees' private information that is unrelated to the company. Monitoring email would guarantee that one learns from from that person, meaning we can form our opinions on that person more quickly. Management might then form their opinions on certain employees because of information unrelated to their work performance, but it may still cause them to intentionally or unintentionally treat those employees differently. Bias may be involved in all sorts of ways (e.g., a manager discovering that an employee is looking for a mate with certain qualities by monitoring their Match.com emails, which then leads the manager to perhaps act that way and may lead them to get involved with the employee if any sort of sexual attraction is involved). A far-fetched example, perhaps, but a possible one.

The reason such a policy would be implemented, according to the statement, would be to reduce waste of resources. But surely there are other ways to cut back on time and system capacity? Monitoring e-mail to achieve that seems like a pretty extreme solution. Perhaps just asking employees to monitoring their own emails and their own space will be enough, especially if employees are told that if this doesn't happen then that policy will actually be enforced. Protecting the company from lawsuits is definitely a benefit, but is it worth it in the grand scheme of things to expose others' privacy in order to benefit in that way? Are the benefits greater than the risks?

In reality, monitoring all employees' e-mails may not be necessary. Perhaps a more logical solution would be to monitor certain employees only. Perhaps different policies related more specificially to lawsuits, or not wasting resources, may be implemented. The policy above doesn't seem to entirely make the most sense in tying with those specific benefits. Those benefits may be true, but is that really the best argument in support of such a policy? Such questions would need to be addressed further.