"SHRM Workplace Privacy Poll"
Evren Esen
Society for Human Resource Management, January 2005.
According to this Society for Human Resource Management study, HR professionals are more likely than employees to agree with their organizations’ monitoring policies. The degree to which HR and employees disagreed on this issue depended on what was being monitored. The biggest disagreements were over an organization’s right to monitor employees’ e-mail use and search employees’ desks. Eighty-seven percent of HR practitioners either agreed or somewhat agreed that management should be allowed to monitor e-mail use compared to 61 percent of employees. Forty-nine percent of HR professionals either agreed or somewhat agreed that organizations have the right to search workers’ desks compared to 23 percent of employees.
According to HR professionals, the top three areas management had a right to monitor were employee expense accounts (96 percent agreed), Internet use (64 percent), and computer use (62 percent). Employees were also most likely to agree with their organizations’ policies towards monitoring expense accounts (85 percent) and Internet use (35 percent), though to a lower degree than their human resources counterparts. Employees listed The use of camera cell phones was the third most commonly mentioned area management had a right to monitor among employees (42 percent agreed).
Interestingly, HR and employees assessed the motivation behind monitoring worker activities very differently. Employees were more likely to believe that trust issues fueled management’s use of monitoring activities than HR. Sixty-four percent of employees listed “To ensure that employees are productive” and another 52 percent said “To monitor employee job performance” as motivations, compared to 39 and 35 percent respectively for HR practitioners.
SHRM conducted the survey in conjunction with CareerJournal.com. The study sampled 336 HR professionals and 520 employees.
