Employee Surveillance at Workplace: Techniques, Benefits and Drawbacks

Introduction
In the modern organizations, most of the employers monitor their workforce. The
employees are motivated by the factor that the employees should spend their time in
the organization in the most effective manner. Surveillance is a process of keeping
close watch over anything. Surveillance came into existence after the development of
new technologies like cameras and hard drives. It has become an important process in
the maintaining of modern day firms. Technology has empowered organizations to have
greater control over performance that is delivered by the employees. Employers use
Information Technology (IT) to monitor different aspects of workplace’s activities
(Carroll, Brown, & Buchholtz, 2017). The employers can monitor different aspects of
employee activities through computer terminals, email, and voice mail or surveillance
camera. The thesis of the current essay is how surveillance operates at the workplace
and whether it has an impact on the employee performance/ behavior.
In the present essay, various techniques for employee surveillance have been
discussed. Further, the increased use of surveillance equipment has been discussed.
The essay has also discussed the benefits and drawbacks of surveillance methods.
There are different ways of monitoring the work of employees. The employers can use
the computer software, which enables them to collect information related to the search
history and the computer storage in terminals and hard disks. The employers can also
use software for the total login hours from the computer or idle time at the employee’s
terminal. The keystroke monitoring is another surveillance technique, which analyzes
how many strokes; the employer is striking each hour.

Email monitoring can also be used to monitor the employees of the organization. If an
organization is using email system, the employer can review it content. The messages
sent to the company or any other stakeholder can be easily evaluated by the employer.
Similarly, telephone monitoring is also used at the workplace (Carroll, Brown, &
Buchholtz, 2017). The employers can monitor calls with the clients or customers to
evaluate the performance of the employees. These methods allow the business to track
the activities of an employee at the workplace. The employee monitoring can be used to
measure the productivity, employee attendance and enhancing security at the
workplace. There are several reasons of monitoring employee at the workplace
(Vermaat, 2013). The organization use monitoring to safeguard the employees at the
workplace. However, it is important to assure that the information collected from
surveillance is used for the intended purpose. It is used to measure the employee
performance and this information can be used to motivate employees for superior
performance.
Monitoring the workplace is also justified in some cases, as the employers accomplish it
to safeguard their interest, the employees’ interest or the interest of the customers.
However, it is acknowledged that the employees are entitled to some degree of privacy
at the workplace. The Human Resource (HR) manager of the organization should focus
on implementing policies so that the employees can maintain their privacy at the
workplace. The Data Protection Act is established to maintain the privacy of an
individual. There are certain activities, which prohibits the surveillance and monitoring
activities. Further, monitoring should not be done in a manner that it does breach the
privacy of the employees.

The structure of an organization influences the extent of employee monitoring. In flat
organization, the employee monitoring is challenging in comparison to the hierarchical
organization structure. In tall hierarchical structure, there are several layers of
management between the frontline employees and the higher management. On the
other hand, the flat structure denotes an organization, where there are only a very few
layers in the organization. In tall structures, there is an opportunity for better supervision
(Martin & Freeman, 2003). In flat organization structures, the number of employees
reporting to each manager is high which provide high level of freedom to each
employee.
In the recent years, there has been a significant controversy related to workplace
monitoring getting too personal and intruding the privacy of the customers. The current
methods are going beyond the traditional methods as they emphasize the use of
portable devices for monitoring the employees. Recently, Amazon has won the patents
for high wrist bands, which will be used to promote the e-commerce warehouse and
distribution staffs. These devices are used to track the hand movements of the workers
as they fill the warehouse of the organization (Marotti, 2018).
Moreover, there are a few companies which are trying to develop devices, which can be
implanted under the skin of the employees. These microchips can be used to enter high
security area. With this technology, the employees will no longer be required to fumble
with electronic cards or passes (Reed, 2018). However, it has reduced the employee
productivity and satisfaction with the organization. Monitoring reduces the engagement
of the employees with the organization (Reed, 2018). The organization can reduce the
resistance of surveillance by educating the staff regarding its need.