by Tonya Latrice Wilson

Created on: May 10, 2008   Last Updated: September 17, 2010

Employers should not monitor employee's Internet use. The reason that I disagree is because it's my belief that an employer should trust their employee. After all, if an employer takes the time to hire an employee, make him or her take a drug test, and go through the hassle of investigating the employee's background, then why in the world wouldn't the employer trust their employees Internet use?

If an employer has to monitor his employee's Internet use, then that employer shouldn't have ever hired that employee in the first place. Why would an employer hire somebody they can't trust?

For example, I use to work in a call center, for a very well known wireless company. When I first started at the company, we could listen to music, eat food at our desk, pretend like we were the supervisor on irate calls, and last of all, we could use the Internet without being monitored.

Now this freedom of unlimited Internet use lasted for the first two years of my employment at this wireless company. However, we pretty much lost our freedom, when a new employee decided to play loud rap music on the Internet. The music was loud, even one of my customers heard the music and thought we were having a party. Somehow, word got around until it reached the new Director of the call center. Apparently, the employee was watching some rap video on one of the Internet sites.

Now, what happened next, was that the Director of the call center put letters in our employee mail boxes, that she will be monitoring all employee Internet use, including, incoming and out-going emails, picture emails, playing games and employees that watch music videos on the Internet.

The Director of the company said that her main intention was to stop employees from going on porn sites and to stop employees from sending pictures of their loved ones. Then I asked the Director is it ok to play games on the Internet? And of course she said no and didn't understand why half of her 1,000 employees played games on the Internet in the first place. Nor did she understand why she was hated by the employee's so much at the call center and when she asked me, I told her that she just answered her own question.

In private, I was one of the few employees that would have a conversation with the Director of the call center. I told her that the reason why you are so hated at this place is because over 500 employees, including myself, don't really give a dam about eating food at their desk, or listening to music, but we do care about the using the Internet and we don't like being monitored. Furthermore, some employees are threatening to quit and go work somewhere else. In addition, some employee's have told me they will write letters to the President of the company about why we don't want our Internet use monitored.

In closing, I just want to say that employees will fight the employers decision. especially, if the decision is a stupid one. furthermore, when I told the Call Center Director that some of her employee's will be writing letters to the President of the call center, by the end of the business day, all of the employees received new letters in their mail box from the Director telling us that she and her team will no longer be monitoring the employees Internet use.

My point is that had the company not tried to monitor our Internet use in the first place, some people wouldn't have quit the company and some wouldn't have threatened to write letter's to the President of the call center. Monitoring an employees Internet use creates feelings of distrust and leaves very little options for an employee's privacy.

Learn more about this author, Tonya Latrice Wilson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.