TACC403: Accounting Information Systems - Employee Monitoring Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of employee monitoring within an accounting information system context. It explores the extent to which management should monitor employee emails, website visits, and overall performance, considering the use of software for tracking keystrokes, website activity, and time management. The report delves into the advantages and disadvantages of each monitoring method, including the use of tools like Email Analytics, AWStats, eLogic, Time Doctor, and WorkiQ. Furthermore, it addresses the ethical and economic implications of such practices, discussing the balance between monitoring for productivity and respecting employee privacy. The report also examines the use of software for electronically shredding emails and the implications of organizations distributing collected information. Recommendations are provided to guide organizations in implementing effective and ethical employee monitoring strategies within their accounting information systems.

Running head: ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEM
Accounting Information System
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEM
Executive Summary
This report aims to use information technology for gaining access to the employees' data as
well as information in an organization. IT is being considered as the subset of ICT for
ensuring that hardware, software as well as peripheral equipment or operated by a specific
group of users. It is required for checking if the software applications and computer hardware
are considering every aspect of computer designing. A limited scope for functionalities and
computing machines, which could be easily programmed for different tasks. The device
expenses and the energy consumption is lowered for making the computing services much
more advanced and also for ensuring that the new technologies could easily change without
much complexity. This report has provided an analysis of employee information, in terms of
productivity, website visit and many more with suitable details and appropriate
recommendations.
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
The extent of Management Monitoring Emails of the Employees........................................3
The extent of Management Monitoring Website Visit of the Employees.............................4
The extent of Management Monitoring Performances of the Employees.............................5
Whether Companies should use Software for Electronically Shredding All Traces of
Emails.....................................................................................................................................5
Organizations distributing information collected about the people, visiting their website....6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
IT or information technology is the proper usage of a computerized system for
executing any type of information or data functionality. It is being utilized within the context
of different business-related operations (Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin 2015). Various companies
use this information technology for accessing confidential information and data most
effectively and even ensure that better efficiency is gained for the business processes and
operations. Few of the most significant functionalities of this information technology include
network analysis, database administration, providing technical support and ensuring
interactive digital media (Schwalbe 2015). Safety and security of the data and information is
also prevailed with this type of technology. This report would be outlining a brief discussion
on the situation for management monitoring every activity of employees with the help of IT
with relevant details and recommendations.
Discussion
The extent of Management Monitoring Emails of the Employees
Information technology is considered as one of the most important and essential
requirements for bringing out maximum growth and development in any particular company
(Marchewka 2016). One of the considerable advantages of this specific technology is that it
helps in identifying the gaps and weaknesses majorly so that proper steps and actions could
be undertaken for this purpose in the most cost-effective manner. The business applications
involve databases such as SQL servers, email servers such as web servers like customer
relationship management, Exchange and many more (Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014). The
applications eventually execute programmed instructions for manipulation, consolidation,
dispersing and also affecting data for the business purpose. The computer servers run
different business applications, and the servers interact with the client users and any other
server across any one of the business network. The IT architectures have evolved in including
cloud computing and virtualization, in which the physical resources are being pooled and
abstracted in various configurations for fulfilling application requirements (Lloyd 2017).
The organizational management could quickly and promptly monitor the electronic
mails of the employees to properly understand the habits and working loads of the employees
(Bloom et al. 2014). The respective email platforms as well as email analytics provide tools
for choosing from the actions that are needed to be undertaken for this circumstance. As a
result, the organization would be able to evaluate and balance the employee workloads after
identifying the most problematic clients and internal contacts. The overall behaviour of the
employees is also noted by this method, and the organization does not face any type of
complexity in this aspect (Sittig and Singh 2015). The performances of the employees are
also identified after thoroughly monitoring the emails of all employees.
This could be done with the help of email monitoring tools like Email Analytics. This
particular tool is effective when the employees use Gmail or G Suite for their business
(Schnoll 2015). With this specific tool, the user could easily monitor the activities or
activities of their employees in 1 specific platform. Email Analytics is also useful for
studying the response times and even for indicating the time it would take for an employee to
respond to an email on an average and the time taken for waiting for their response. It helps
in completing the analysis of different email threads (Chae, Koh and Prybutok 2014). The
information could be referred to as extremely helpful for determining the effectiveness and
length of the conversations of various employees for understanding the obstacles that are
present towards efficiency.
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In spite of having several advantages of monitoring the emails, the organization
should not access the personal emails of its employees (Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier
2015). The restriction should be kept only to official emails for ensuring that no employee is
involved in any type of unauthorized or unauthenticated activity within the organization.
Privacy and confidentiality of the personal emails of these employees would be lost entirely if
the organizational management would access these personal emails (Andrade and Doolin
2016). Moreover, the corporate governance would not get any type of advantage by accessing
their emails and hence it should be restricted to monitor the employees' emails for this
purpose.
The extent of Management Monitoring Website Visit of the Employees
The clouds might be distributed across distinct locations and also shared with any
other information technology user for remaining contained in a specific data centre to ensure
proper deployments (Andrade and Doolin 2016). The teams of information technology are
reliable in a broader range of specialized information technology skills to support equipment,
activities and applications. The third-party contractors and the IT vendor support personnel
are responsible for ensuring better effectiveness and efficiency (Tarafdar et al. 2015).
Application management, software development and the hardware components like servers,
storage administrators and desktop support are provided on top priority for better
effectiveness. It is the designing and deployment of different computerized networks for data
processing as well as communication, and hence information processing becomes immensely
easier (Lee, Thomas and Baskerville 2015).
The organizational management can monitor the website visiting of the employees by
involving some of the most critical and essential tools and techniques. One of the most more
convenient and effective methods to monitor the web site visit of their employees is by
utilizing different tools for website visit analysis (Wu, Straub and Liang 2015). The first and
the most significant method is AWStats. It comes previously installed by several web hosting
organizations. Moreover, the organizational management could easily download the history
of the web site visit data of their employees with this tool and then identify if any type of
discrepancy is being identified under any circumstance. Another useful tool for this purpose
is e Logic that is responsible for providing three levels of services based on the requirements
of the organizational management (Avgerou and Walsham 2017). Apart from the exact data,
it also provides referring sites, demographics, history and other details of the users. Google
Analytics is yet another popular and significant tool that provides data about the web site
visit.
The organization has the complete right or authority to get access of the website
visiting data of their employees for understanding the authenticity and authorization of
employees and whether the employees are entering into any type of unethical or illegal web
sites from their organizational server (Kim 2015). It is needed to be analyzed so that the
corporate servers are being utilized only for proper and authenticated web sites, and they are
undertaking an ethical approach. The extent of employee monitoring should be restricted to
the organizational servers, i.e. within the organization. The management should take strict
actions against those employees, who are violating the rules of website visiting within any
specific organization (Zhilenkov and Chernyi 2015). The web-based access control would
help the organizational management in communicating the data and signals as well as the IP
based access control to understand whether the security events are appropriately followed
.
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The extent of Management Monitoring Performances of the Employees
It is essential and significant to monitor and evaluate the performances of the
employees (Cui et al. 2015). This particular step is required to check the behaviour of the
employees within the workplace and whether they are performing their job duties efficiently
or not. Employee performance monitoring helps the organization in identifying the gaps and
weaknesses of every employee and also to ensure that better effectiveness and efficiency is
being gained for organizational productivity to a high level (D’Arcy et al. 2014). Proper
management of the employee performance mainly deals with the corporate strategies,
practices and policies for the core purpose of establishment of performance expectation for
the staff with subsequent measuring as well as monitoring of the result. This entire procedure
of this performance management is being linked to any other organizational systems, like
strategic planning, total compensations, individual as well as team development, proper
succession planning, technology systems and many more (Hills 2018).
Information technology plays one of the most significant roles in monitoring
performances of the employees within the organization. The overall attainment of the target
output is entirely dependent on the consistency of the productivity level of the employees
(Wagner, Vollmar and Wagner 2014). No company could perform at the peak level if any of
the employees are not providing proper production to improvise organizational productivity.
There are several tools present that help in monitoring the performances of the employees in
the most effective manner. The first and the foremost tool that is extremely helpful for
monitoring the performances of their employees is Time Doctor (Nielsen, Mathiassen and
Newell 2014). This particular time management software is related to real-time tracking of
the tasks and also prevention of wasted time in the business. It would be useful for the
companies to track the time management or productivity of the remote team. It even records
the Internet utilization of the employee for providing a simple report of web sites visited as
well as the user applications (Passey and Samways 2016). As a result, employee productivity
is being improved for focusing on top priority and eve, ensuring that the managers are
entirely aware of the employees.
The other significant and essential tool that is extremely helpful for monitoring the
performances of their employees is WorkiQ. It is specific software, which can track the
computer behaviour of the staff like removal of multi-tasking or getting the team for focusing
on time management (Avgerou and Walsham 2017). The processes could be well tracked for
every application and also compare the means of various employees completing their work.
The overall productivity of the employees would be appropriately compared in this manner,
and the top performers would be identified. Moreover, there would be an improvement in the
work distribution after identification of the underutilized skill sets or an overworked
employee. The organizational management can also utilize the tool of Todoist for keeping
every employee upgraded with every aspect for better accomplishment. Overall productivity
is being monitored with the software so that every task gets completed within the deadline,
and it is cross-compatible to any platform, utilized by them (Lee, Thomas and Baskerville
2015). As soon as the information about employee performance is being collected, training
sessions should be arranged for the weaker employees to provide them with better scope and
chance for better returns.
Whether Companies should use Software for Electronically Shredding All Traces of
Emails
Different organizations should utilize the software for electronically shredding every
trace of the email to ensure that the systems and servers are completely free from the issues
or complexities related to more substantial file management (Laudon and Laudon 2015). A
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proper file shredder, known as the digital or virtual shredder is a specific program that is
being designed for rendering computer-based files unreadable. In several operating systems,
as soon as any user deletes any particular file, it eventually exists on the hard drive, however,
is made inaccessible via standard methods. The respective storage space for this specific file
is being considered as accessible, and it might cause the confidential data to be overwritten. It
might be possible for recovering the original datum, unless and until any type of overwriting
has occurred (Chae, Koh and Prybutok 2014). The individual deleted files could be
eventually recovered through readily accessible freeware programs, like Puran File Recovery
and Recuva and even professional software like EnCase, which are being utilized by the law
enforcement and data recovery officials.
The organizational management could utilize these shredders for shredding the traces
of the emails of their employees to ensure that proper effectiveness is obtained without much
complexity. These shredders are similar to the hard drive over writers, and they do not work
for the entire drive of the employees (Sittig and Singh 2015). These programs even overwrite
the content in one particular file several times with 0s, 1s and few random bits to ensure that
the data is completely unrecoverable and not only for the extraordinary efforts. When it is
essential that the traces of the emails are being obliterated, which is the only method for
being sure that it could not be accessed for physical destruction of the device.
One of the most effective and significant methods to ensure that every trace of the
emails of these employees is being removed properly, the organizational management should
eventually pulverize the assembly (Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin 2015). It would be helpful for
them to ensure that the shredding of email traces is completed and the advantages like time-
saving, high security, proper records management and many more are being absorbed in the
organizational management so that the services are improved to a high level (Xiang, Magnini
and Fesenmaier 2015). The organizational productivity would be increased as the email trace
shredder would be making the systems lighter and free from any type of complexity related to
file management and server management. Moreover, it would be cost-effective for the
organization as they do not have to get hard drives for the business.
Organizations distributing information collected about the people, visiting their website
The organizational management after collecting the confidential information and data
about the people should disseminate the information to the supervisors and senior
management for ensuring that they can undertake proper steps to improve overall
productivity in the most effective manner (Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin 2015). With such a
collection of information, the management would be able to know about the type of web site
visit of the employees and how to improve the procedure efficiently by fulfilling the demands
of the customers. This type of information could be distributed amongst the supervisors and
senior management by setting meetings periodically. It would help them in including ideas of
different employees and how well the processes could be executed. Project communication
planning is referred to as the significant activity, which enables defining of specified
behaviours and also a selection of techniques for gathering, managing, delegating as well as
reviewing the information of the stakeholders (Schwalbe 2015).
Technology-based communication is also considered as another significant and
noteworthy methodology for distributing the collected information regarding the individuals,
who eventually visit their website. The respective project manager can take up the
responsibility to develop a communication system with the visiting clients or people for
ensuring that they can take up proper steps to improve the situation subsequently
(Marchewka 2016). Information systems could be used by the organizational management to
ensure that confidential information is being distributed efficiently and promptly and every
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aspect is a vital part of the ICT and are entirely concerned with sharing of sensitive
information and data amongst each other.
As communication gets improved, it becomes quite more comfortable for the
organization to ensure that the factors of communication technology are appropriately
executed (Lloyd 2017). One of the essential requirements of this communication technology
is to check the distinct availability of the communication systems for making it possible to
receive relevant information and also to react to the changes (Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin
2015). The information technology is providing three different channels for communication
for ensuring that better results are gained, and the organizational management can access
more data about the web site visit. It would also be essential for them to as they would be
able to improve their web site appearance and details after consideration of customer
feedback to a high level (Schnoll 2015). Significant methods for communication could also
be made by the organizational management with the help of information technology so that
they can interact with their customers without any complexity and better customer
satisfaction is gained under every circumstance.
Conclusion
Therefore, a conclusion could be drawn that IT is the subsequent utilization of all
types of computers, networking devices, storage, processes, infrastructure as well as physical
devices for the purpose of creation, processing, storing, securing and exchanging any specific
form of electronic datum. This IT is being utilized for enterprise operations, and the
utilization could easily encompass both telephony and computer technology. IT involves
numerous layers of different physical equipment like hardware, management and automation
of tools, virtualization, applications like software and operating systems for properly
performing every necessary functionality. The user devices, software as well as peripherals,
such as laptops, smartphones and also recording equipment could be eventually included
within the respective IT domain. The above-provided report has appropriately described a
detailed analysis of organizational management having a check on the employee performance
and access to the confidential data, such as emails with the following details.
Recommendations
Suitable recommendations for ensuring security in the employee monitoring about
performances, website visit, and collecting information about their employees in an
organization are as follows:
i) Restriction of Access Control: The first and the foremost suitable and sufficient
recommendation for collecting employee information and ensuring high security in the
respective employee monitoring for checking employee performance and increasing
productivity to a high level is a restriction of access control. The respective organization
would be able to collect maximum information efficiently and promptly with such distinct
step, and the information would not be shared with anyone, apart from the authorized or
authenticated management. Access control is the selective restriction of accessibility to a
resource or asset and could only be accessed with the subsequent permission from the top
administration. Login credentials and locks are present and these two significant mechanisms
of access control. The physical access control could be achieved quickly, however for
collecting information regarding employees; it would be extremely beneficial for them to
ensure that access control is restricted and no unauthorized employee is getting the chance to
get involved with any type of issue or complexity.
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ii) Holding Periodical Meetings: The second effective and appropriate
recommendation to collect maximum information about the employees is holding periodical
meetings with the employees and their supervisors. It would be beneficial for them as they
would be learning about the performances of the employees and whether the employees are
giving proper production to the organization. Moreover, feedback should also be taken from
the employees regarding their job satisfaction aspects and if the organizational management
is providing opportunities to the employees for their growth and development. An in-depth
employee satisfaction survey is also applicable for this purpose.
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