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INTERACTIVE Do you think your company monitors you? Yes No View Results

April 21, 1999
Web posted at: 11:28 a.m. EDT (1528 GMT)

by Tom Diederich

(IDG) -- If you work at a major corporation, there's a 45% chance your employer is monitoring your e-mail, voice mail, computer files, phone calls or other work-related activities, according to a new report from the American Management Association (AMA).

Last year, 43% of the firms reported keeping tabs on their employees, up from 35% in 1997.

In the most recent survey, when additional forms of eavesdropping are added to the equation -- including security cameras -- the percentage of companies engaged in electronic monitoring and surveillance climbs to 67% compared with 63% in 1997, the AMA said.

The AMA, a nonprofit management-development organization in New York, based the findings on a poll of 1,054 human resources managers conducted by mail in January. The association said the sample mirrored its corporate membership of 10,000 organizations that together employ one-fourth of the U.S. workforce. The survey's margin of error was 3.5%.

The financial sector had the most monitoring, with 68% of companies involved in some form of snooping, followed by business and professional service providers at 51%, and wholesalers and retailers at 47%, the AMA said.

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Most of the monitoring was performed as spot checks, and 84% of the companies that said they kept a close eye on their employees' activities let them know they're watching, the association added.

But full disclosure isn't enough, according to one critic. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the study's results highlight the need for legislation protecting worker rights.

"The Electronic Communications Privacy Act does a fairly good job at protecting privacy for commercial services. For example, if you sign up for America Online, people cannot routinely read your e-mail messages," Rotenberg said. "But when you use an electronic-mail system in the workplace, your privacy is not protected by law -- and that's something that should change."

One problem is that the technology used to track employee behavior is improving rapidly, Rotenberg added. "The Congress has, generally speaking, taken a go-slow approach to privacy. The problem is that the technology is not going slowly," he said.

The depth of the monitoring will increase along with the development of automated tools like complex software filters designed to search for words and send red flags to managers, he said.

Many corporations, though, say they must watch employee actions not only to protect company secrets, but to make sure workers are following the law. Companies worry they'll be open to lawsuits if workers engage in inappropriate behavior on the job.

Because the AMA's corporate members are mostly midsize and large companies, the group said the data didn't accurately reflect policies and practices in the overall U.S. economy, where smaller firms predominate.