Businesses Want to Monitor Employees’ Social Networking Activity
Name
Management 155 / 770
05/31/09
Ethics Newsline Article 2
Businesses Want to Monitor Employees’ Social Networking Activity
Revealed in a new Deloitte survey, many businesses want to be able to monitor their employees’ social networking activity on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. The main problem with this idea stems from employers wanting to monitor this activity on a subordinate’s off time. BusinessWeek reported that companies want to make sure that their hard-earned reputation stays solid and meaningful, rather than seeing a bunch of employees express their opinion, whether it’d be positive or negative on the website. A large amount of executives that were interviewed by Deloitte said that they felt it was right by them to be able to monitor activity of this kind of their employees. This number was as high as sixty-percent. According to a summary by Bizjournals.com, over half of the employees that were interviewed said that their activities online at home are not any of their employers’ business. There are some things, that despite having information or opinions about work on a social networking site, other employees will post on their site, only to find out that it’s the talk of the company at the water cooler. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, this happened to a woman in Australia who had grieved of her love life on Facebook, and then found out that it was the featured conversation of the boardroom at the marketing company she worked for.
In situations such as these, employers’ should be careful of others’ privacy, but at the same time look for any suspicious activity that may be going on through the site. I am not saying that it is right or wrong for employers to view others’ social networking activity, but there has to be a fine line in what is considered viewable and not viewable. Perhaps having employees keep certain parts of their social networking profiles public and other parts private would help. An
Management 155 / 770
05/31/09
Ethics Newsline Article 2
Businesses Want to Monitor Employees’ Social Networking Activity
Revealed in a new Deloitte survey, many businesses want to be able to monitor their employees’ social networking activity on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. The main problem with this idea stems from employers wanting to monitor this activity on a subordinate’s off time. BusinessWeek reported that companies want to make sure that their hard-earned reputation stays solid and meaningful, rather than seeing a bunch of employees express their opinion, whether it’d be positive or negative on the website. A large amount of executives that were interviewed by Deloitte said that they felt it was right by them to be able to monitor activity of this kind of their employees. This number was as high as sixty-percent. According to a summary by Bizjournals.com, over half of the employees that were interviewed said that their activities online at home are not any of their employers’ business. There are some things, that despite having information or opinions about work on a social networking site, other employees will post on their site, only to find out that it’s the talk of the company at the water cooler. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, this happened to a woman in Australia who had grieved of her love life on Facebook, and then found out that it was the featured conversation of the boardroom at the marketing company she worked for.
In situations such as these, employers’ should be careful of others’ privacy, but at the same time look for any suspicious activity that may be going on through the site. I am not saying that it is right or wrong for employers to view others’ social networking activity, but there has to be a fine line in what is considered viewable and not viewable. Perhaps having employees keep certain parts of their social networking profiles public and other parts private would help. An