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I believe that employers have every right to monitor empoyee's internet use for several reasons. As long as employees are performing their jobs and using the company internet for the uses it was intended for within the company, then the employees should have nothing to hide and no reason to be offended by the company monitoring their use of the internet.

Employers pay their employees to perform their job duties, not waste company time for their own selfish benefit. Employers should not pay their employees for time spent playing poker online or sending personal emails to all of their friends. Employees are not paid to make their own personal purchases on Ebay or Amazon, yet a staggering number of workers each day spends a considerable amount of time for just that. In a sense, it is no different than stealing from an employer to take wages for time when services were not performed.

Aside from the employer suffering lost wages while their employees play online, their computers and other equipment are subjected to failure due to viruses. All it takes is for an employee to visit one gaming site or one porn site, or even a site that appears to be completely harmless, and then it could be too late. Viruses can come from just about anywhere on the internet.

Employees with email and internet access can also have the ability to download and forward private company information that is not intended for public use. This can lead to all sorts of problems, even the downfall of a company.

I've seen a shocking number of employees over the years in various businesses where I have worked spend more time playing on the internet than actually performing the tasks required of them. I'm not just talking about a quick email to arrange lunch plans here and there. I'm talking about employees spending hours at a time bidding on auction items or playing games on Pogo.com. I've even walked past employees viewing porn without consideration for other workers or even customers who might be offended.

It's probably a good thing that I myself am not an employer because I would be quite strict about such matters. I also don't believe that employees should be allowed to place or receive personal phone calls while on the clock unless they are related to a medical emergency. The same goes for text messages. If companies were to calculate all of the time wasted by employees on extra breaks, personal calls, non-authorized internet usage, and time spent chatting with their co-workers, then the wages lost could rank in the thousands of dollars per month, even millions for larger corporations.

The employee wasting time playing online doesn't always see it as stealing from the company, but often just as a distraction to escape their unpleasant work for a few minutes at a time. To them, it is "No big deal.", but it can be a very big deal to their employers. I believe that employers should not only have the right to monitor internet usage, but to also dock employees for time wasted or terminate them for company theft. I know this isn't a very popular opinion from the viewpoint of employees, but it is in the best interest of the employers.

Learn more about this author, Kaitlyn Hamilton.
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