With social networking and other electronic communications making employees' actions and attitudes more visible than ever to employers, it's clear that a big change in the relationship between work and private life is well underway. Yet little research has been undertaken to understand organizations' use of that information, or how the potential for increased monitoring and surveillance is perceived by workers. My colleagues Dr Brian Cooper from Monash University and Dr Rob Hecker from the University of Tasmania and I have just conducted a survey to understand workers' awareness of employer policies and the current state of what they consider to be fair and reasonable. We polled a random sample of 500 working people in our own country, Australia.
Of particular interest to us was the realm of social media. It is clear enough why employers might want to monitor employees' activities on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These can be real distractions with a negative impact on productivity. Indeed, our survey revealed that, among the many employees who access social media sites while at work, only 14% claim that use is purely work-related. Many more, 42%, say their at-work use of social media is solely for personal purposes. (Another 44% say it is both personal and work-related.) There can also be reputational damage when employees clearly affiliated with organizations share their opinions and behaviors so publicly, and even leakage of information valuable to competitors.
Yet the issues raised when employers gain information from social media and other online activity are legion. Begin with the fact that this information is housed on external sites, not the organization's proprietary systems. Certainly these sites hold different kinds of data than employers have collected before. To what extent does an employer have the right to make use of this new font of information?
Given the potential for misunderstandings and misuse, it is surprising to discover how unconcerned the typical worker seems to be. Asked whether it was appropriate for employers to monitor the web sites visited by employees, fully 78% thought it was. This makes internet activity monitoring the most acceptable of the various forms of surveillance we asked respondents to consider.
Regarding employees' ability to see what discoveries are noted in their "personnel files," 72% of respondents report that they understand their rights on this important issue. However, this also means that more than a quarter of employees (28%) do not. More significantly, only a little over half (51%) are aware of how their employer uses the personal information they hold, and only 53% know who in the organization has access to it. Nonetheless, 62% are "not at all" concerned about the use and disclosure of personal information by their employer, and a further 20% are only "a little" concerned.
Perhaps this accounts for the seeming lack of demand for policies to be clearly communicated. While a majority (57%) report that their organizations have written privacy policies or statements for employees, 23% say they do not, and 20% do not know. And on the subject of internet usage policies, 35% of respondents say their organizations do not have a policy on internet use and another 24% say a policy exists but it has not been provided to them to review?so that 59% of those surveyed are in the dark about their organization's expectations.
Employees' use of social networks to communicate about their personal and professional lives can only be expected to increase?and increasingly, we can expect this to become an area of conflict. Policies and knowledge of the issues around privacy at work do not appear to be as common or comprehensive as we might expect.
What better time than now to sound a wakeup call? The festive season is upon us, a time when people traditionally let their hair down. Employees need to be more aware than ever that a careless tweet, photo, or comment on their social website could have major ramifications when they return to work in the new year. And as for employers, there may be no better resolution you could make than deciding to develop, revisit, or update your social media policy.
Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/this_is_your_wakeup_call_on_em.html
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