Should corporates filter staff mails?

Defintely yes, personal life is restricted in office and must be away from one's office.This would increase the professionalism within an employee.

I completely agree that we should filter staff mails & monitor them. People are so under-educated about what the risks are of using a publicly accessible e-mail account. They think that when they send an e-mail from their account that e-mail is perfectly secure, that no one else can look at it. That's just wrong. It's easy for an employee to attach a confidential file to an outgoing e-mail message. Whether it's by mistake or on purpose, the outcome of the loss of confidential data is the same. Borland International experienced this first-hand. A Borland employee used the company's e-mail system to send out confidential information to competitor Symantec, his prospective employer. The trade secrets included product design specifications, sales data, and information regarding a prospective contract for which both companies were competing. The employee and recipient were both charged with trade secret theft. It's easy to send e-mail without thinking about the content and its consequences. Yet, corporate e-mail is a business tool that can have the same legal weight as a letter written on company letterhead. Unlike printed letters, once the Send key is hit, there's way to recover the message. No matter how amusing some employees may find jokes, others may be offended. But also only by making policy, these things cannot be controlled, there should be a monitoring team consisting of HRD, IT, Legal, Top management, who monitor time to time these things, should make aware to all the employees.

This calls for debate as it is matter of both how much professional ethics employees demonstrate as well as how much privacy should a person be allowed to maintain. It is as good as allowing government to tap personal phones without personal consent as it is more important to take into account national security compared to individual. The same goes for company's confidential information. Although confidential information can be compromised in many different ways than what an individual can imagine, filtering mails can be one way for company's security dept to analyse information.

I am agree on that the corporates should filter staff mails, because is a way to avoid that critical and confidential information is transfered to the competition. But I think this is only a containment. Corporates should also identify the possible causes for the lack of loyalty from they employees and implement the appropiate actions to eliminate or at least reduce those causes. I would suggest that corporates should evaluate the profile of the employees that will be assigned to roles where critical and confidential information is managed and determine if they are really accountable and if their level of loyalty is the one required for the position.

office is a place of work. there is no need to stay if there is no work in the office. you should not be paid for gibberish things like staff mails to do!!!

Certainly yes.  The very knowledge that the employees are being watched will ensure that no misadventures are tried in place of work.  This will act as a deterrent against personal mails, also put a check into any kind  abuse, data theft etc.,

I don't mean that these don't happen under monitored environments, but acts as a general deterrent.

It also helps monitor quality of client correspondences happening, and can give the an early warning in case any project or client is dissatisfied and helps in setting things right before things have gone bad.

In today's rat race there are no permanent employees in any org .Hence there is little latitude for loyalty that was present in earlier days. This is more so in IT and its obvious that IT org structure changes very fast with the bottom line effects and many are hired or either fired.

In this scenario the CEO is already high tensioned with his business objectives and in the present day with too many scams or piracy and secrecy being exploited by various companies in a innovative way, there are people who either fall prey to these poachers  or willingly like to earn faster by selling information.

The secrecy of the IT services and products documents can be sent through many innovative ways other than mails. Hence mails could be one of the careers of these loss of company security aspects which cannot be compromised.

To respect the company personnel and their privacy and dignity of life and also to not doubt their integrity at the cost of few black sheep , its not advisable to screen the personal mails.This would reduce the people morale and reduce effective of work for those people who really work as per company's norms.

Hence with due respect to employees and their freedom of their privacy the following is apt.

The work area where official work is done should  not be a place where the mail access should  be given  to any one(irrespective of positions)

The mail facility/browsing can be organised in a public place with computer terminals where any one can access their mails  or keep their personal integrity of their private mails. This facility has to be provided because mostly all software personnel work late hours and more so they are addict to many modern facilities like banking, personal utilization of various service providers, where they perforce should have the facility to function during their lean period during work.

Well in any case i don't agree with mixing up these both issues of personal and official from the same desktop at the cost of company's security .

Hence the monitoring of mails in the present day are provided with various software that is measure to ensure that strict security is being followed and these days it becomes a clients requirement too. clients are comfortable only with company s who have foolproof security processes and security measures in every aspects. Mails are a danger to these aspects of IT-business.

the company is meant for official work and not for personal work . however allowing them to use the official desk for Private mails and having a system of monitoring their mail leaves a dent on integrity of many who are sincere too.

Hence the IT infrastructure should be planned for bothe the issues without affecting the employees freedom of privacy which is a morale booster. The employees freedom of privacy  should be respected by all owners and mangement of the company's

Regards

Major M Rajendran

dear darshana

its indeed a matter of concern not only for the management but also for the employees being two face of a single coin as complementing each other.management expects employees to be loyal,dedicated,sincere with undoubted integrity to attain desired goals with a sense of belonging among the employees.however it has been witnessed on many occasions that employees faltered just to satisfy their  own goals. here i must say that its only few % of people who get swayed by the lucrative short term gain. i feel that if you are hired by any organisation for a specific task and being compensated accordingly, you may like to give your best shot.

in a team work a single guy falters, the entire team must be liable for the same....then only the team spirit gets intact.

i support the argument

There is no other way bcoz company's interests are of paramount importance.An oppurtunity is provided to show our ability.We earn and if earn then we can have our own resources and time to utilize them for our interests.When we are hired then it is company that comes first else we are kings in our own way.

It also reflects the moral duty of the employee about his/her conduct.

Of course definitely they have to filter the staff mails for the security reason.

I suggest the staff to don’t use the official id for there personal msgs.My frnd aparna, I believe my staff on there capabilities but not on there feature growth. For a moment assume that I believe them, then why they will leave the job after getting the good opportunity.

In the world of Intelllectual capital and Service Sector, i think the corporates must have an eye on their employees, this is not only for mails sent by them but also for other activities like thier telephonic talks, thier association with other concerns etc., the employees are nowadays fell prey to competitors and there are also incidents where there is a large quantity of data is transferred to competitors.

 As of my experience i have seen companies who use advanced type of systems but never have an USB drive or an CD writable drive (they use networks to transfer Data which is Monitored) and a leading MNC bank scrutinizes all incoming and outgoing mails of their employees and even they block email attachments and get permission from the concerned epersons to deliver that mail.

So the employers can act as a watchdog of their employees but there must be some thresholds of their monitoring and the employees must gain trust in their boss or else there is a chance of opening their (employees) Re`sumes for switching to other companies.

Yes i agree with the conclusion filltering the mails of the employees in the organisation.But some times employes became some sterotype in the organisation were they use to send junk mails.

Employees are paid to perform the job they are hired for. Yes, they do need recreation, but can that be at the cost of the employer? Definitely not. Freedom does not imply wasting time, passing on copies of processes and procedures to various group and friends. Where is the issue if an employer wants to protect its intellectual property?

Yes, filters are definitely acceptable.

Yes, companies should keep the track of mails sent out from the personnel account. I feel this has to be done keeping things in mind : the compliance are being followed or not, culture of the organization not being hampered, and many others. This not only keeps the employees from doing something wrong intentionally or unintentionally but also discourages the employees from using those sites which are prohibited. The hidden camera's and filter mails make a huge difference in employee culture for any organization. ...... Thank you, Manish N.

Cheers!!

In my opinion companies have to protect them selves from their competitors by one of the means is monitor staff's mails.This should not surprise few because fighting enemy inside or outside is all same.Our defence force select their men from common civilian pool and our corporates select their men & women  from common civilian pool.But the difference is, in defence selected candidates are altered to their(defence) needs and their mails are subjected to scrutiny as and when required, we all know the existing best dicipline in defence.But in corporates dicipline exists to a lesser extent than defence, hence registance may be seen when corporates filter staff mails,which should be ignored in the interest of organisation.

i shoud be you are right

Every company having unique ways and ideas of business management and there by it is imperative that they maintain confidentiality in all operations. Everyone in the staff may not be straight forward and there will be someone with vested interest. They may try to encash by sending the informations out. It could also be an accidental error for leakage of informations. There by I feel it is right to upport you

Good Darshana, very valid argument, i support the argument because the management is having full right to filter not only the e-mails but all the correspondences, personal belongings of its staff for better security measures and as safety precautions to avoid leakage of integral data or anything which advocates the integrity and USP of the organisation.

Yes ..this shouldn't have any problem as all the IT infrastructure is provided by company for achieving compnay goals....no issues for companies to have transperency in the system...this will increase the faith.....defaulters will in anycase find their ways out....:)

The argument has to be analysed & reviewed w.r.t. its relevancy & importance for a particular business entity. It can not be cotnsidered as a generalized rule for one & all. 

For a Business enitity where its business model itself is based on assimilation, compilation, analysis, strategizing & finally successful monetization of data in its different form, the organisation has every right & it must opt for monitoring & filtering of employee's external communications whether it is in the forms of e-mail, sms, mms or physical communications. If the business entity neglects this, then it is inviting trouble for itself & exposing to such kind of external risk which will ultimately make its business model unsustainable. In such case, individual employee's privacy related arguments are to be suppressed by suitable HR/ADM policy doctrine.   

However, if a business entity needs creative use of external communications undertaken by its employees for sustaining & expanding the business ops, then you have to let them go & have a free use of medium of external communications. This is because creativity can not be harnessed in a close & restrictive environment.

So, It will be important for a organisation like WIPRO to opt for close monitoring of employee's e-mails.

RDG 

A very valid question is being asked here and I feel that many a staff feels that it is an infringement of their rights,However lets look at this issue impartially.

Staff should be using their corporate email id's purely for work.

Any personal mails should be from their personal email account,many companies set filters which deny access to webmail sites like yahoo & rediffmail for the simple reason that

1.They don't want external viruses clogging their servers

2.They have total control of what goes in and out from staff email accounts.This rule also forms a part of staff code of conduct and in many cases is part of the staff code of conduct.

This policy of what should be allowed and disallowed has to be looked at time and again by the management based on traffic statistics,which are available from the IT department.

Hi:

They have to filter mails so that corporates can ensure about the data security.In many companies data is the key asset so if companies filter it would be fine and it is more of a precautionary measure.It would be more professional as well.

Thanks and Regards,

Priya R

More over if valuable resources get mails for their career opportunity in their companies mails, as they don't get much time to access their personal mail ids, this can stop the company from losing their candidates, they can stop the mail at the entry level and retain the employees.

Yes,

I support for this, because many of the times, people are just sending personal mails, and we cannot access important mails on in case of any urgent basis. and our IT people give the reason i.e server down. But why it happend every time though we are having constant check.

 So many times this case is happened with me only and i am totally helpless that time

Should corporates check employee's mails or not? Darshana good topic to discuss on!

Any information that could potentially harm the corporates reputation, spoil customer delight - through hacking of customer accounts etc. need to be monitored and checked on. Corporates should check mails in that case.

If its an environment where employees deal with Customer's Account related details, then i feel employees shouldn't be able to access their mails. 

In today's world there is so munch of competition, competitors get to great extent of securing information about their competition through any way. It's better to check internally first and then go to external world.

Employees shouldn't access their mails during office hours if they feel it is personal and it shouldn't be monitored.

Thanks,

Srinivas

Hi Darshana,

A very valid point that you have raised. I just cant wait to write or discuss on this.

I feel the technology is now so advance that tracking of the emails can be done which will help the organizations in also knowing about any personal emails been sent from that specific emailid. However there are other sources of leaking the company information. So we need to keep a track of all the latest technological developments which is happening around us.