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Fortune Small Business: Full Disclosure

How to explain that you're monitoring your employees behavior using the latest electronic tools.

Fortune Small Business
Friday, November 1, 2002
By FSB Staff

 

Just thinking of installing electronic monitoring equipment like security cameras and Internet tracking software is enough to give most business owners a privacy-issue headache. And then there's the blow to your staff's morale if you mismanage the monitoring plan. But the process doesn't have to be a harrowing experience, says Shanti Atkins of Employment Law Learning Technologies, a consulting firm that specializes in training managers to handle complex privacy issues. Here are her tips for fostering an emotionally sound transition that might also boost productivity.

* Explain the need to strike a "delicate balance" between employee privacy and your responsibility to provide a safe and productive workplace. "Your employees have to understand that the monitoring issue is not just some perverse desire," says Atkins. "It's a way to prevent pervasive racial discrimination or the pilfering of personal employee data -- like Social Security numbers or medical records."

* Don't compound the pain by forcing workers to sit through long and tedious training sessions. Consider an online training program that will allow employees to see dramatized scenarios of computer hacking on their screens, followed by a copy of the company's Internet and e-mail usage policy. And oh, yeah, make sure your policies are easy to understand.

* If possible, don't force your workforce to go cold turkey. Invest in programs that allow you to place quotas on the amount of hours spent on sites like Bluefly.com and Espn.com instead of restricting them outright.

* Keep an eye on your own Big Brother tendencies. Do you really need to record every single keyboard stroke? Or is monitoring large e-mail attachments enough? "Err on the conservative side," says Atkins. "There's a human issue at stake. You can't afford to kill morale."