E-mail supervision, ethics 4

[infogeslan]

I did post a question like this one several months ago, but I consider this forum is more appropiate than the one I used back then. We have a Lotus Domino 6.0 in our company and the administrator has the power to see, read, log and administrate all e-mails in the company. Is this ethical or legal? By the way, I am the administrator and want to know about your opinions before I do anything.

Thanks a lot.


"Let us be the change we want to see in the world" M.Gandhi

 

[lionelhill]

It used to be considered reasonable for a "time and motion" expert to study what an employee was doing with a view to helping them do it more efficiently. If a person is spending on average 25% of the working day sending/receiving e-mails, it would be logical to examine this to the same extent as any other part of their work.

I agree in general that it is counterproductive for employers to come to heavy on the subject of private e-mails. Mostly it will just alienate people. But this isn't the motivation forum, it's the ethics forum. If an employer wants to restrict all use of e-mail to work-purposes-only, they are entitled to do so. They are also entitled to look at all work. Logical conclusion: in that environment they are entitled to look at all e-mail, because all e-mail is work.

I do have a big issue with employers who penalise employees for receiving unsolicited e-mail at work. It is simply not true that this only happens when the employee has "leaked" their e-mail address to a disreputable source.