Question

Justification/Recommendation Report – Read the information presented below to develop a comprehensive media use policy for your company. Research the web to find out what other companies have done to adopt such suitable policies.Describe suitable policies in your report. Include computer monitoring and surveillance software, instant messaging use, social networking sites, blogging sites, and smartphone use. Write a convincing justification/recommendation report based upon your conclusions you made from your research from the information you learned in Chapter 9.

Answer 1

Employers should also be aware of the potential pitfalls of monitoring. You could create a morale problem and hurt employee performance if your workers feel a distrustful Big Brother is lurking over their shoulders. You could inadvertently learn about people's religion, sexual orientation, political views and medical problems, creating potential privacy dilemmas or even opening your firm up to discrimination lawsuits. And you could run afoul of the National Labor Relations Board if you discipline employees for making negative comments about you online. A year ago, it issued guidelines affirming employees' right to discuss and seek to improve their working conditions, following a number of cases involving social media.

But surveillance, defined as tracking an individual's activities, has "a creepy factor" that can cause pushback from employees, he says. Avoid such trouble by engaging only in focused surveillance of a person if you have well-founded suspicions of policy or legal violations and have the documented agreement of top managers and your attorney.

General monitoring for electronic abuses, with employees' full knowledge, is a necessary practice, Flynn says. "It's a fact of business life that legal risks exist, regulatory risks exist," she says. "Employees will put your business at risk accidentally or intentionally. You need to mitigate those risks" and keep misdeeds from turning into expensive crises or lawsuits.

Generally, employers have the right to monitor their employees use of the Internet (including visiting social networking sites, checking e-mails, and instant messaging) on computers owned by the employer, during employees on-duty hours. Although federal laws prohibits employers from discriminating against a prospective or current employee based on information on the employee's social networking site or personal blog relating to their race, color, national origin, gender, age, disability, and immigration or citizen status, employers can and do use information on such websites as a method of conducting background checks. Employees should therefore be conscious of what information they display on social media websites.