One always feels watched when at work. One can never manage to prowl out of his/her cubicle without walking into their boss on the way out. You might need a break before, in the middle or after attacking a hoard of paperwork. That point, however, is not understood very well by employers. They might want to monitor your activities while you are at work. One way to do so is physical spying but it has been outweighed by numerous spying software for PC and cell phones as spying on someone physically comes with its own set of problems. Things have become easier for employers after BYOD has sprouted up.
With BYOD, computer monitoring software and cell phone spyware, you can probably feel your palms sweating with nervousness or maybe even a peep over your shoulder.
How Facebook Proves to be a lot of Help at Work
Quickly logging into Facebook to check your notifications and inbox when your boss goes out of the room has been the most commonly used trick in workplaces. But what if you are doing that and your boss suddenly turns back to give you a quick work-related talk, only to see you doing this. There is always a chance that your boss did not see anything as you quickly closed down the window. There is, however, an even bigger chance that he did.
Employees must be mindful of the fact that computer monitoring software and spyware might have been installed in their PCs at work. This has caused a lot of commotion on the part of the employees recently as a ‘breach of privacy’. Nonetheless, many members of the corporate world continue monitoring their employees.
These monitoring software not only target PC’s but also cell phones. Your boss now has an easy access to even your smallest activities on your cell phone, thus calculating the time you have wasted and your actual input at the workplace. Spy software are even more dangerous when combined with a keylogger software. Spy software for Android phones have made this even easier.
Before the sudden temptation of Facebook-ing takes over you, you should understand that your boss has a way of knowing about your activities without suddenly walking up on you.
Pros and Cons
While BYOD is stirring debates all over the place, employee monitoring comes with both pros and cons. It is true that no one likes being monitored but usually the employers’ reasons outweigh the protests of the employees. They point out the fact that employees might be wasting their time and becoming less productive. The only possible way of knowing this is through monitoring employees.
Breach of Privacy
In all this, there is no way that an employee’s right to privacy should be ignored. Employers do have a right to know what an employee does in the office hours and this can only be done when software like Firesheep and Wire Shark are used to monitor personal activities on the internet by employees.
Be Careful
Employees should remain vigilant at all times. Employees should resist the temptation to use a personal account on office PC or the internet. If you are logging in to your personal Facebook, Twitter, Skype or other social networking sites, on your PC at work, the monitoring software will pick up your personal information and transfer it to a private PC.
The only way out of this is to refrain from mixing your personal life with your professional one.
This guest post is courtesy of Jessica Carol.
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