Privacy: Issues, Policies, Statements - Workplace Privacy

Employees constitute another group whose Internet use has come under increasing scrutiny. Work-place surveillance pits employers' financial interests, the protection of corporate intellectual property, workplace productivity, and security against the privacy rights of employees.

International Data Corporation (IDC) attributes 30 to 40 percent of all lost worker productivity to personal Web surfing on company time; this costs U.S. companies about $54 billion annually. According to the American Management Association, in 2000 nearly 75 percent of all major U.S. companies monitored employee communications, including telephone calls, e-mail, and Internet connections; this represented nearly twice the percentage that did so in 1997.

Frequently the supervision of employee behavior falls to the information technology (IT) department, though increasingly U.S. firms also hire CPOs—Chief Privacy Officers. Many companies use monitoring software that scans not only Web-site URLs, but the actual content of Web pages, to determine whether employees' online activity is linked to their workplace duties.