The Ethics of Employee Monitoring

Employers are concerned with proper employee behavior and Code of Conduct compliance in relation to their industries and related organizations. While more and more employers are using monitoring devices to check or keep track of their employees’ actions, some employees feel that too much monitoring is an invasion of their privacy.

Employee monitoring has emerged as a necessity and yet as a very controversial issue due to the complexity and widespread use of technology. Employee monitoring is the act of watching and monitoring employees’ actions during working hours using employer equipment/property (Raposa & Mujtaba, 2003). Employers are concerned with proper employee behavior and Code of Conduct compliance in relation to their industries and related organizations. While more and more employers are using monitoring devices to check or keep track of their employees’ actions, some employees feel that too much monitoring is an invasion of their privacy. Thus, the ethics of monitoring employees is explored and ethical dimensions of this issue are presented in order to provide a full picture of this practice. Furthermore, throughout the document there are discussions about future evolvement of employee monitoring with the emergence of new technology.