And discuss the following: Is Employer Monitoring of Employee E-Mail Justified - Research Paper Example

Social media has also impacted a lot on employee communications in the recent years. The use of e-mails and social media alongside other innovations in communication at the workplace provide a lot of benefits for both employees and their employers. The employers who provide e-mail communication services for their workers realize the importance of effective communication, both within the company and communication with clients and prospects that are out of the company (Steiner & Steiner, 2012, 97).

The e-mail is an inexpensive method of communication, easier to use and very simple to install on company computers. This technology reduces paper usage in the company and also enables the companies save on space that would otherwise be used to store letters and other correspondences. Despite having all these technology being very beneficial, it poses a lot of challenges and threats in the work place relating to employee privacy and how employees ought to monitor communication within their premises.

With the availability of the internet, workers may be distracted from their work to concentrate on other things such as watching videos on YouTube or viewing pornographic content during office hours. Employees may also use the e-mail services to send offensive emails to their fellow co-workers, or even to clients and other stakeholder in the company (Sarah, 2000, 108). They may also use this free service to circulate confidential information amongst themselves or even to outsiders, including competitors.

The employees may also use email services to incite other co-workers to rebel against the management. Such issues threaten security and peace at the work place. This has made it necessary for employers to feel the need to monitor how their employees communicate via emails, and the kind of information they share amongst themselves or with other third parties. Employees on the other hand want their communication to be confidential and their privacy respected (Brice and Waung, 2002, 175). This dilemma involving e-mail communication at work has not been clearly addressed legally, making it a very challenging issue for business communication.

The federal law is not very clear to what extent employees should monitor their employee’s communication at the work place. In most case, state law is often called to address some of the underlying issues, although state law is also not that much comprehensive. State laws on privacy of employees differ from state to state. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is a federal law governing businesses and other private sector organizations in relation to collection and disclosure of personal information of their employees in the course of work (Bahaudin, 2012, 26).

This law does not however address the issues involved in the dilemma and leaves a lot of grey areas that need to be addressed. There is also need for other laws to be enacted so as to ensure in as much as employers feel the necessity to monitor communication of their employees; privacy of their employees should not be inflicted. Apart from the legal dimension, this dilemma also bears a lot of ethical issues. The question of privacy is an ethical issue that most people feel