Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
employees. Other examples of employee monitoring by American employers included
video surveillance (48 percent), monitoring keyboard activity (45 percent), monitoring
time spent on the phone (45 percent), and monitoring emails (43 percent) [32].
The principal purpose of monitoring is to identify inappropriate use of company
resources [33]. A quarter of companies in the United Kingdom have fired employees for
improper use of the Internet. In the majority of these cases, the employee was surfing
the Web for pornography. Another study of employee emails concluded that eliminating
email containing gossip and jokes would cut the time staff spend reading email by 30
percent [34]. A study conducted by IDC concluded that between 30 and 40 percent of
Internet use by employees was not work related [35].
Monitoring can help detect illegal activities of employees as well. By monitoring
instant messaging conversations, employers have caught employees who had performed
various misdeeds, including an employee who hacked into a company computer after
being denied a promotion [36].
Monitoring is also used to ensure that customers are getting the products and ser-
vices they need. Reviewing customer phone calls to help desks can reveal if the company
ought to be providing its customers with better documentation or training [37].
Many companies use monitoring to gauge the productivity of their workers. For
example, telemarketing firms keep track of how many calls their employees make per
hour. Sometimes monitoring can help an organization assess the quality of the work
done by its employees. Major League Baseball has introduced QuesTec's Umpire Infor-
mation System to evaluate how well umpires are calling balls and strikes [38].
Companies are beginning to investigate the use of wireless networks to track the
locations of their employees (Figure 10.7). Knowing the location of service technicians
would enable an automated system to respond to a breakdown by alerting the technician
closest to the malfunctioning piece of equipment. A system that tracked the locations of
hospital physicians could upload a patient's file into the wireless laptop held by a doctor
approaching a hospital bed.
More schools are using video cameras to increase security [39]. The school district
in Biloxi, Mississippi, used gambling-generated tax receipts to install digital cameras in
all 500 of its classrooms. An elementary school principal gushes, “It's like truth serum.
When we have a he-said, she-said situation, 9 times out of 10, all we have to do is ask
children if they want us to go back and look at the camera, and they fess up” [40].
It's an open question whether monitoring is ultimately beneficial to an organization.
Obviously, organizations institute monitoring because they have reason to believe it will
improve the quantity and/or quality of the work performed by their employees. There
is evidence that employee monitoring makes employees more focused on their tasks but
also reduces job satisfaction [41].
In the 1980s, General Electric and Citibank set up software development teams in India.
Since then, many corporations have established field offices in India, including Analog
Devices, Cadence Design Systems, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. Ban-
