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Monitoring Affects Motivation Essay, Research Paper

While employee monitoring by management is nothing new, electronic monitoring (EM), is a relatively new phenomenon. According to Vaught, EM can be described as the use of electronic instruments or devices such as radio, video, and computer systems to collect, store, analyze, and report individual or group actions or performance . EM has grown to be a worldwide feature of organizations. Firms use these systems to monitor employee s actions, and to make sure they are performing to their potential.

Motivation is a process that arouses and directs goal-directed behavior (Kreitner and Kinicki, 1998). Motivation is an attribute in the workplace that is dealt with everyday. Managers are constantly looking for ways to improve an employee s performance. One of the hardest parts of a manager s job is to find an approach to motivate his/her employees.

Our mission statement, as an organizational team, is to inform management of the implications that an electronic monitoring system has on employee work motivation. Certainly EM raises ethical dilemmas for managers, yet they must continually strive for improvements in productivity to compete in the marketplace (Vaught, 2000). The key to adopting an effective EM system, is the implementation process. If the system is implemented in a fair and equitable manner, then there should not be too many problems. If on the other hand, it is implemented poorly, it will cause many problems within the firm.

The wave of the new century is just evolving, and the importance of E-commerce is strengthening each day. Tying an issue of organizational behavior in with an issue of E-commerce will give us an understanding of the types of effects E-commerce can have on an organization.

Monitoring means consistently measuring performance and providing ongoing feedback to employees and work groups on their progress toward reaching their goals. Ongoing monitoring provides the opportunity to check how employees are doing and to identify and resolve any problems early (http://www.opm.gov/perform/monitor.htm). Electronic Monitoring (EM) has been around for many years to keep a watch over its employees. Every organization should have a type of policy to address EM; it should be in an employee handbook, or an employment application. Each employee should sign it to indicate that the employee understands and consents to the policy. Other ways of implementing the policy is to have a message appear each time an employee logs on to a company computer.

A couple of tips about employee monitoring are offered by the business owner s toolkit: monitoring should not extend into highly private areas in the workplace, such as restrooms and lounges; monitoring generally should be limited to the workplace. Only in the most unusual and rare circumstances should surveillance move beyond the workplace; and there should be a clear relationship between monitoring and a business-related reasoning (www.toolkit.cch.com/).

New technologies make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees’ jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals and through electronic and voice mail. The main facet of EM is by reviewing an employee s computer usage. The websites that they log on to during work are monitored to an extreme. If you have a computer terminal at your job, it may be your employer’s window into your workspace. There are several types of computer monitoring: employers can use computer software that enables them to see what is on the screen or stored in the employees’ computer terminals and harddisks; people involved in intensive word-processing and data entry jobs may be subject to keystroke monitoring. This system tells the manager how many keystrokes per hour each employee is performing. It also may inform employees if they are above or below the standard number of keystrokes expected. Keystroke monitoring has been linked with health problems including stress disabilities and physical problems like carpal tunnel syndrome; and the technique allows employers to keep track of the amount of time an employee spends away from the computer or idle time at the terminal (http://www.privacyrights.org).

Another monitoring technique that many employers are now acquiring is called Little Brother. Like a number of other similar products, it can tell the boss where you’ve been on the Internet. “It’s very specific. It looks at who the users are and where the user goes at what time, says Jen Andersen of Kansmen Corporation, makers of Little Brother. “We can make very extensive reporting about every single issue. You go to Playboy, sports, weather, organizations — anything. It’s extremely specific.” He’s not kidding. Those red bars show where his co-workers are on the Web in real time. The software also generates reports, complete with adjectives describing how a worker is spending his Internet time at the office. “The boss or the employer — whomever’s in control of the network — can set the policy and can have reports generated on a certain individual, or they can monitor all the time,” adds Andersen (http://www.littlebrother.com/).

There are many legal issues dealing with EM. Already, employees have brought actions under Title VII claiming racial discrimination in their employment, with racial comments in the e-mails of fellow employees. Likewise, sexually explicit e-mail messages from frequent solicitations for dates with co-workers via voice mail and e-mail referred to by the courts as e-harassment , have been the basis for sexual harassment suits. Internet access may also cause problems. If employees view sexually explicit materials, electronic records may be evidence used by an unhappy employee suing a formal employer for tolerating sexual harassment. All monitoring activity must be conducted within state and federal laws,

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