IFSM 304 Paper A – Application of Decision Making Framework

Problem Statement:

Privacy in the Workplace: Monitoring Employee Web, E-Mail and phone Use. What is the best way that companies should deal with employee using company computer and phone equipment for personal uses during the workday?

Identify alternatives:

Create a zero tolerance policy.

Create an acceptable use policy.

Choose alternative

Create an acceptable use policy that all employees of the company most follow.

Implement the decision

Create the policy and create training for the new policy.

Evaluate results

Run test to see if employees are abusing the policy

As the culture and technology changes in the workplace different problems seem to arise. One of the most thought about problems is “Privacy in the work place.” Privacy in the work place includes but is not limited to monitoring employee web, Email and phone use at the workplace or on company equipment. This could be a huge problem for the company and a hindrance for the employees. The company is trying to get the most work out of each employee so spending time on the phone or surfing the Internet could seem non productive to the company. The employee might need to handle some quick personal business and not want to take off a full hour of PTO to go back home to send out an e mail to there family that only takes 5 minutes to write. During this paper I am going to use the common good approach when it comes to the decision to figure out a way to help both the company and employees come up with a way that privacy in the work place can work for both parties.

The next step in the decision making process is identifying alternatives to handling the privacy at the work place problem. One suggestion was to come up with a zero tolerance policy. This policy would state that under no circumstances could an employee use work time or work equipment to do any personal business. But this policy might offend good workers. “If fewer than 1% of employees, according to some reports, abuse their work day and employee trust, online, why make 100% of employees feel uncomfortable and distrusted? CITATION Hea l 1033 (Heathfield)” Another suggesting that was given was to develop a detailed acceptable use policy. This policy would clearly detail what is appropriate to do on work time and using work computers and phone equipment.

The next step in the decision making process is to evaluate and choose an alterative that works best. After looking into both suggestions and staying with the companies choice of the common good approach when it comes to decision making, research shows that creating a company wide acceptable uses policy would better benefit the company and it’s employees. This policy would allow users to handle some personal business on company time or on company equipment. But it will allow the company to monitor the activities that the employee is doing on there equipment. This policy should also detail what happens if the policy is abused. This statement should come up every time an employee logs onto a work computer.

The next step in the decision-making process is implementing the new acceptable uses policy. First the policy needs to get the approval of upper management. Then a team of employees should come up with training for all the other employees. Than all the other employees should have to do training on the new policy. “Create a plan for announcing your Internet usage policy throughout the organization to ensure that employee communication is well managed, the policy is understood and the restrictions imposed are fully justified. This could include denying access to Internet resources until users agree to accept the new policy.CITATION Hug l 1033 (Hughes)” Also this new policy should be advertised to the employees via e-mails and conference calls with the employee. There should be mandatory yearly training on the new policy.

The last step in the decision making progress is to evaluate the results of the acceptable use policy. This can be done with random check to see how long employees are on website that don’t have anything to do with company work. Also you can intercept a few emails and read them and make sure that the majority of the emails are work related. You can also randomly pick up the phone and make sure employees are talking about company business. After random check are done then the company should document what they have discovered and warn employees that they are watching and maybe do a briefing to all the employees about what they discovered.

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY Heathfield, S. (n.d.). Alternatives to Employee internet monitoring. Retrieved from Human Resources : www.humanresources.about.com

Hughes, J. (n.d.). Ten tips for implementing an acceptable internet use policy. Retrieved from Computerworld: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/94231/ten_tips_for_implementing_an_acceptable_internet_use_policy