Workplace computer monitoring can be an employee's best friend

^{First posted in this form on February 12, 2010}

No, that is not a typo - it does say "employee", not "employer"....ahhh, yes, I can hear it now: "Are you friggin' NUTS?!?"

I may be, but that's beside the point - the point is that if you care about your career and your job (they are two different things) you could be better off, have a nicer working environment, and feel more secure and confident in what you do if you work for an employer who fairly and consistently monitors your company's computers. How much better off? Among many other things, fair and consistent workplace computer monitoring could be the one thing that enables you to do a significant amount of your work from home, it could get your hard work recognized, it could help your employer identify changes that make you happier (and, let's be honest. more productive), and it could provide your employer a much-needed reality check when he or she is working under invalid assumptions that adversely affect your job or status.

Computer monitoring abuses

Two words in the opening statement of that last paragraph need to be emphasized, of course: fairly and consistently. We all have a certain understanding (and fear) of what workplace computer monitoring could mean in the absence of checks, balances and honest intentions. Somewhere in our collective memories there lies a version of the urban legend that tells of the worker whose tasteless friends send him dirty jokes and links to questionable sites via his company e-mail. Opened or not, the e-mail client the company uses dutifully downloads the e-mails and attachments to his hard-drive for later reference, and one day he gets a letter of reprimand (or worse) from Human Resources.

There have been terrible abuses, a greater number of inexcusable errors in judgment, and a pervasive insensitivity in the workplace and elsewhere toward the human being sitting in front of the computer and especially to considerations of dignity and privacy. There are two major root causes to these problems, one we're stuck with, and one that is correctable. The sad reality is that yes, there are companies who have no regard for anything but the bottom line, where the flow of communication is in one direction only (downward) and where employees are treated like mushrooms or toilet paper. The only resolution to the problems they create is avoidance or escape. The good news? Though the pain and injustice they cause is far disproportionate to their numbers, there are relatively few of these companies around and they rarely grow or survive for long. Those that do become infamous - "Neutron Jack" Welch of General Electronic earned his moniker for destroying the lives and livelihoods of entire departments of employees, while leaving the buildings standing. Fortunately, he's since retired and hopefully the culture at GE will change over time. In my own career of 22 years consulting to 44 companies of all sizes, I've seen only one case where this kind of disregard for the people that make them their money predominated (eProduction Solutions of Weatherford International) and even then that treatment was generally reserved for those who weren't of the same ethnic origin or gender as the original founders.

Companies really don't want to be (or be run by) a Jack Welch or Dharmesh Mehta or Brenda Jones - ultimately there is no profit in it. While the corporate landscape will never be altruistic, the fact that it is about the money is inextricably linked to the fact a stable, well-motivated, productive, and - dare I say it? - happy workforce makes a company more money.

Poor quality tools

The second major cause of unfairness in the use of computer monitoring software can be resolved, because the source is at least in part the quality of the tools available (although the question can always be raised about the insensitivity of an organization that uses clumsy or questionable methods to accomplish their goals). We've published another blog at http://hubpages.com/hub/Workplace-computer-security that discusses in detail the tools, their roles in workplace computer monitoring, and their deficiencies. That blog also describes a new tool that is built from the ground up with respect for the employee as well as the needs of the employer, including considerations for privacy and even-handedness, and providing reasonable bases for comparisons in the analysis process. This tool is actually a family of products called viewSender, and includes enterprise applications for monitoring workplace computers (pcOversight) and supporting telecommuters (pcTelecommute), and for protecting family members from on-line predators and other threats (iEavesdrop).

Our discussion here about the value of workplace computer monitoring to the employee is based on the capabilities of the viewSender applications - the benefits, features, and uses provided by viewSender are not available with other vendors' products.

The employee benefit

Now that we've touched briefly on the negative aspects of workplace computer monitoring and some of the causes, what's in all of this for you, the employee? You might be surprised what a modern computer monitoring system like viewSender can do for you - here is a list of just the few we are going to mention in this article (in no particular order):

1. Removes perfection and unrealistic expectations as the standards for comparison by establishing a reasonable baseline for what are (and are not) common behaviors and practices among your fellow employees

2. Recognizes behaviors that are better than the norm

3. Promotes the equal treatment of everyone regardless of skin color, religion, background or social group, or other considerations the computer cannot see:

a. Encourages a positive workplace environment by detecting discrimination and harassment early, and correcting them before the entire department or company is affected (or spreads to litigation or governmental intervention)

b. If you are the victim of harassment or discrimination, helps protect you directly by detecting the abuse early and potentially freeing you from having to come forward yourself to report it

4. Helps protect you from the employee who is slowly "going postal" before he or she pulls the trigger

5. Builds trust with your employer so you can take advantage of benefits like telecommuting, or trying out for a job you like but haven't done before

6. Reduces the advantage of co-workers, supervisors, and others who might otherwise use dishonesty against you

7. Allows more freedom to be yourself where it doesn't negatively affect the company

8. Can reduce the sense of isolation or being singled out when a problem does occur, or when in a whistleblower situation

9. Attunes managers to see in real time the effects their decisions and other influences inside and outside the workplace have on the general mood of the staff and the workplace environment, and

10. Serves as a better solution than the alternative. Workplace computer monitoring of some kind is a requirement for employers in the modern age - given that fact, it is better for employees to have a good, fair system with checks, balances, and equal access than a bad system.

I've provided some illustrations in greater detail of each of these benefits below.

1. Level playing field

We've all witnessed a child caught in a misdeed immediately accuse someone else of having done the same thing (and presumably, having gotten a free pass for doing it). Though the timing, motivation, and credibility of the assertion might be suspect, the assertion itself is in part a reflection of a basic human desire to compete on a level playing field. Though in better times we may strut and spike footballs and wear bling to tell everyone how special we are, when we are under the microscope for something bad that has happened, we want nothing worse to happen to us than the best thing that happened to anyone else who did the same thing.

Whether or not that particular thought is any more realistic coming from the mouth of an adult is subject to debate, but the expectation that when we're in trouble we should be held to no higher a standard than the average person is reasonable and embedded in our society.

There is nothing wrong with being average - all of us excel at something but (except perhaps in our own minds) we tend to be average in everything else, so even the best of us have a vested interest in the standards of average. And the concept of "average" is a very important one in hiring, firing and retaining employees.

Something your employer may not tell you, particularly if he or she is trying to motivate you to do better (and admit it, doing better eventually helps everyone): On average, the average replacement employee is, well... average. This is the fundamental truth that belies the use of computer monitoring (or any other tool or practice) intentionally to find excuses to discharge employees. Despite what an employer threatens, if you are doing at least an average job and you are not doing anything criminal or otherwise deliberately causing harm to the company, the chances of the employer finding anyone better than you (casting aside his or her non-standard personal definitions of "better") are a crapshoot at best. Remember, their choices are limited to the tiny subset of people willing and able to do your specific job who happen to be available at the particular time of his or her need (or can be made available at potentially greater expense). All he or she knows about those candidates is limited largely to what people unknown to him or her offer, and that either the employee or the employer was dissatisfied enough with their last position and/or performance that they felt (or were) compelled to leave. That, and a resume and list of references that are statistically likely to be inaccurate or deceptive in some manner. There are exceptions - cases where your employer has recruited a specific "rock star" well-known or desirable to him or her to replace you irrespective of you or your work performance, but to be honest if that happens your options were limited anyway.

Once your employer has found your "average" replacement (and compensated somehow for your loss during the search), the employer has to train the new hire and acclimate him or her and the work environment to each other. So, the entire sequence of firing and hiring someone is (at least in the beginning) at best a net loss for the employer and not something a reasonable organization sets as a goal or takes lightly.

So, you can make a case that all other considerations aside (business failure or downsizing) there is some safety in performing at an average level, at least. You will most likely not get rich, or get promoted often, or have great things written about you in the company's house organ, but you can generally continue to draw a paycheck if your performance is safely in the middle of the pack.

Before you get comfortable with that thought and consider dialing down your work effort over the next few weeks, here's a wake-up call: What makes you think your employer knows what an "average" work effort is? Or that you do? Or that yours and theirs line up? Or most importantly, that in your employer's eyes your work performance measures up to whatever the standard for "average" is? Does your boss know, for example that everyone in the free world likes to check their personal (not corporate) e-mail on their breaks? If he or she isn’t aware of that salient fact, they may consider ten minutes a day excessive, or perhaps twenty... or perhaps even trying to contact your e-mail website is frowned upon. Who knows? At least, until someone gets written up, of course.

One of the unfortunate givens of a long career is that you will, without fail, run into at least one (and for your sake, I hope no more than one) management type I like to call the bean-counting passive-aggressive control freak. This individual believes that one-size-fits-all numerically-based mandates from heaven will resolve any human problem in the workplace. You will never convince him or her that the same number and length of restroom breaks on the factory floor aren't suitable for both the weekend marathon runner and the twenty-something newly married woman four months into her first pregnancy. And this wonderful representative of humanity won't be deterred by lack of information or experience - he or she will gladly force their primitive ideas about what should and should not be acceptable upon anyone unfortunate enough to work underneath them (probably the greatest hidden threat to a company's morale and productivity ever invented, and one of the reasons I'd think twice about working for any company that didn't have a competent monitoring system in place).

A monitoring system like viewSender answers the "what is normal or average?" question, so that policies can be established that aren't self-destructive by nature and define enforceable and reasonable limits. Te resolve the simple example problem above, by adding keywords representing the e-mail addresses of some of the major free e-mail domains (hotmail.com, gmail.com, mail.yahoo.com) to the viewSender Agent (or by post-parsing collected text at the viewSender Server), it is very easy to quickly establish a common sense baseline for how long (that is, over how many consecutive capturing passes) and how often an employer's productive workers tend to access their personal e-mail accounts, and then set an alarm limit somewhere north of those numbers.

For any issue that lends itself to workplace computer monitoring, the viewSender tools provide accurate and meaningful ways to determine what represents an "average" the organization is willing to tolerate through observation and reporting, and then to monitor the exceptional cases that fall well outside that average.

For the employee, this means that any computer behavior that is typical of the average employee will fall within the tolerance range, freeing the employee to behave normally without fear of recrimination or arbitrary standards (and freeing the organizations from the repercussions of too lax or too tight a restriction policy, including employee morale).

2. It's about the good, too

We tend to associate workplace computer monitoring systems with the negative –we assume that their purpose is to detect bad events or behaviors. However, a robust system like viewSender will take notice of things that happen on either side of a line, both good and bad.

I remember all too well the first time I was boxed into a corner by my girlfriend and made to ask for my first raise. Yes, I had been at my job for awhile and I had done good work, but my review wasn't due yet and in the small towns of the Midwest you were discouraged from taking things out of turn. I was at that age where testosterone trumps everything so I went, hat in hand, to my employer. I remember being rigid with fear and more worried about raising the question than about the final answer (at some point later I decided finding a less materialistic girlfriend was easier).

Conversely, I also remember other times in my early career where I didn't speak up, naively trusting the system, and the crushing feeling of rejection when a raise wasn't forthcoming, or was smaller than what I had hoped for. I'm pretty sure I was a good employee, but for however long I lasted afterwards at that job I didn't have the same sense of commitment as before.

There are no numbers to quote, but my gut feeling is that a lot of people feel that same intense nervousness and tend to self-censor requests for rewards and raises, or delay them while their sense of entitlement grows (in the latter case, the ultimate denial of the expected - earned? - reward can have explosive consequences). Unfortunately, while individuals are as likely as not to return the excess when they receive more product than they paid for, most employers will gladly accept more effort or results from an employee than they originally bargained for, often without offering anything in return. This is not necessarily because the employer wants to be unfair - the employer's focus may be on other things, or (most likely) there is a disjoint between the value placed on the employee's work by the employee and the value assigned by the employer. This problem is especially pronounced where the employee's work product is not easily measured.

The problem is significant in and of itself - the value to the organization of an employee who performs above and beyond the call of duty but doesn't spend their time thumping their own chest is immense (think Radar O'Reilly). The harm caused by losing an uncelebrated central cog to the machinery may be even greater, and if a valuable employee goes unrewarded long enough, one of two things will happen (both of them bad): someone else will recognize their talents and lure them away, or they will leave of their own volition.

The problem of identifying and recognizing great employees who won't or don't promote themselves is exacerbated by our growing diversity. You can't paint with too broad a brush - individuals within a culture will vary from the cultural norms - but many people who arrived here from Asian, East Indian, or Near East countries may be less likely to speak up about their own accomplishments or actively participate in meetings where other cultures are present, even though their work product may be exemplary. This tendency may especially affect women from those and other cultures. Regardless how they present themselves in the workplace, they have the same physical and emotional needs as everyone else, and must answer to their communities and provide for their families. Their desire to have their contributions acknowledged is just as strong as for anyone, and in some specific instances where the individual is the head of the household, perhaps stronger.

The flip side of the coin is the high-maintenance self-proclaimed rock star who has no problem at all demanding more and more of the organization's resources. To keep this individual from skimming all of the cream and leaving none for other deserving employees, there needs to be some kind of validation of the value he or she delivers.

The viewSender Server component offers two post-collection parsing options that help identify individuals who are performing well, or who serve a previously unrecognized core role in an organization. The first is something of a brute-force method, where the viewSender Server can extract references to a person in viewed or created e-mails, on-line conversations, and on-screen documents and find negative or positive keywords in the same context. A report can be generated showing the number of references, a qualitative negative/positive index, and changes over time for individual members of a group for comparisons between themselves.

A second viewSender Server method currently under development is even more powerful, and can identify individuals or positions that play key roles in the flow of information through an organization. viewSender does this by seeking out patterns of behavior in the collected text that identify messages or documents when they are first received or created. It can also recognize patterns of text within the message or document that are unique to that item. As the item is dispersed through the organization, viewSender can detect the pathways that item traverses as its unique text shows up on various computer screens. It can report who handles messages or documents on an individual document basis, and also recognize general patterns for multiple items, such as when they are being routed are routed through the same person. It can therefore identify the importance of an individual to item traffic, and where the same item is routed back to the same person, identify inefficiencies which if corrected could make that person's job easier, eliminating wasteful handling and reducing the possibility of error.

viewSender's traffic recognition tool can do much more - it can recognize patterns where the routing of items intersects, ends, causes the creation of new items, or where the item is re-directed, These are all signs of an important cog in the machinery, and someone who has impact on the organization.

Each of us as employees (and we're all employees at some level - even the CEO answers to the board of directors) are responsible for our own welfare and success within the organization. But wouldn't it be nice to know that management hears about it when we do good things, too? viewSender can put a bounce of confidence in your step when you do go in to request that raise, because you know viewSender has been paying attention even when it seems like no one else has.

3. Promotes equal opportunity, and exposes equal opportunity abuse

The issue of equal opportunity in the workplace is a touchy subject. As a nation, we should take great pride in the efforts we have made and the accomplishments we have achieved - no other nation encourages diversity as we do, and no other nation invests so much to make it happen.

That having been said, it is at best a flawed and broken system in actual practice. Large pockets of discrimination are still found in the work environment, and harassment continues between employers and employees as well as between co-workers. The tools we have for dealing with discrimination are as suitable to the task as shotguns are for killing mosquitoes - the primary tool (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, complaint) can lay waste to the work environment and, despite supposed protections, to the complainant's career as well.

At the same time, we have the new phenomenon of "equal opportunity abuse" - somehow, the blinged-out wannabe rap musician in the shipping department blasting out over a boom box lyrics demeaning to women and promoting violence can dare management to do anything about it, while the quiet single mom working in the clerical pool must suffer the indignities in silence every time she has to pass through to go to the restroom. I myself was a witness to a group of East Indian-born managers led by Dharmesh Mehta (ep-Solutions subsidiary of Weatherford International) trampling the rights of subordinates who didn't share the same country of birth, all behind the protections of antiquated laws that didn't consider the presumed "abused" becoming the abuser. A co-worker who had come from JP Morgan/Chase told me of being forced to allow a group of obese black women in his department to wear bedroom slippers or go barefoot in the corporate offices during the work day by order of superiors under threat of a discrimination complaint.

There is always the more common problem of what is one person's "harassment" is another's innocent remark and vice-versa, and the highly-charged environment that arises when groups of one constituency or another arise in competition with one another, or a formal allegation is made. When combined with a lack of tools or skills that prevent management from getting abreast of a problem early on, what started out as a small manageable problem (or even misunderstanding) can quickly spiral out of control.

We have come so far, and diversity and getting along have such value to employers as well as to society in general, that we will continue to push forward - but the problems aren't going away anytime soon.

viewSender can identify problems, using keywords that are universally recognized as offensive, as they are occurring in real time, and bring them to management's attention before they get out-of-hand. Just the knowledge that a means exists outside of filing an EEOC complaint can discourage the expression of harassment and discrimination in the workplace (and certainly sends out a strong signal that it won't be tolerated). How is this a benefit to the employee? Simple answer - everyone is different in some way from other people, and when it is your differences that are under attack and you are outranked or outnumbered or uncomfortable expressing your feelings, you will appreciate this viewSender capability.

In addition to indirectly discouraging or pre-empting the expression of discrimination and harassment in the workplace simply by its presence, viewSender's features can also directly help the employee in two way, as described in the next subsections.

3.a. Prevents workplace tensions by detecting harassment and discrimination early

Early detection of workplace harassment and discrimination enables management to take action (i.e., sensitivity courses, proper procedure training, and discipline where necessary) to resolve issues before employee morale and productivity are disturbed. In the absence of a tool like viewSender to detect these as they arise rather than long after the fact, the potential for damage - to the company's interests as well as the employees' - is tremendous. In the real-world example we've been using (ep-Solutions of Weatherford) the company advertised an internal help line, called "Listen Up", as being the confidential first step. Unfortunately, ep-Solutions is a corrupt organization (their offices were raided two years previously by the FBI for their complicity in the oil-for-food scam, and they are currently under investigation for using an offshore consulting company to launder bribery payments to foreign countries) with no intention of correcting the discrimination emanating from the top of their management hierarchy.

The Weatherford ListenUp line is instead used to provide advance warning so the company officers can cover their tracks, and to intimidate the complainant into quitting voluntarily before they before file a formal EEOC complaint. In this case, the ListenUp complaint was filed in March, and the complainant did not quit, so the employees who were not managers (and largely not responsible directly for the discrimination) and the complainant were left to deal with eight months of an awkward and uncomfortable situation until the formal EEOC complaint was filed in November. The situation only became worse as ep-Solutions management began an aggressive campaign to push the complainant out the door, eventually fabricating an excuse for outright termination (despite EEOC law prohibiting such retaliation) in February. In addition to the ongoing discrimination, the employees had to endure the tensions and uncertainties of the complaint process, and will have to endure more through interrogatories, depositions, and testimony of the ensuing lawsuit.

Had the company itself not intentionally discriminated against its employees, and had the company been sincere in its approach to the problem, the viewSender system could have provided early detection of the problem, the offending managers could have been disciplined or relocated, and none of the employees would have had to been made aware of the situation.

Trust me, being insulated from a messy discrimination complaint process is a real benefit to any employee!

3.b. Automated detection helps prevent "blame-the-victim" when abuses are discovered

If you are yourself the victim of discrimination or harassment, need your job, and don't trust your employer enough to believe they won't retaliate against you, viewSender may help by getting the information to management via a neutral means. However, there are several caveats to that. First, if your company is not sincere or honest in its dealings with discrimination or harassment (or like ep-Solutions, is the source of that discrimination or harassment), viewSender's notifications will not immediately help you - they may not even be active if the keywords have been removed from the Agent and Server.

If the harassment or discrimination has been ongoing for some time and nothing has been done about it, it is incumbent upon you to remove yourself from the situation and/or file a formal complaint with the EEOC. In the event you do file a formal complaint, viewSender may provide some help - if its discrimination and harassment keywords haven't been removed, viewSender may be able to provide supporting evidence for your complaint.

4. Can detect growing anger management issues and other changes in behavior among co-workers

It is an astonishing reflection of our times that one of the most important services a viewSender monitoring system provides is to protect you from your co-workers. The idea of someone "going postal" used to be a consideration only if you lived in places like Waco, Texas - but no more.

The viewSender post-collection parsing component can provide standard and optional features that allow three levels of detection for changing moods or demeanor among all employees or for individuals. The standard and most basic level looks for direct matches of keywords that indicate a problem. When negative keyword matches occur more frequently for an individual, the sampling rate and/or the amount of information that is captured from the screen may be automatically increased (these values will be automatically reduced when negative keyword matches return to a normal level.

A second optional level of viewSender services uses a larger scientifically-weighted array of keywords which carry a positive or negative connotation value - when the keywords are matched to a text sample and the weightings applied, a general indication of mood can be extracted. The mood ratings can be determined on an individual or group basis, and when compared to a number of samples over time will reveal an accurate depiction of changes in attitude and feelings.

Finally, viewSender supports an optional sophisticated algorithm specifically tailored to analyzing large samples of text collected over time and looking for indications of stressed or disgruntled individuals.

5. Trust is the ticket to trying new things

Above all other considerations, the viewSender computer monitoring system is about building trust. Trust, as any parent can tell you, is built from taking small leaps of faith in someone, validating that the faith was justified and the results as expected, and then taking another small leap of faith until the results of the validation become so automatic that step can be discarded and the trust becomes absolute.

Trust is built and tested in increments, not granted blindly in grand gestures. viewSender is ideal for the validation portion of the thrust building process, because it can be tuned to the rising level of trust and confidence as they grow.

With viewSender in place, the employer can take risks with an employee he or she otherwise couldn't - on the job training, caring for an important customer, or trying out an employee's novel idea. The employee can rise to the level of their abilities.

In fact, viewSender is so good at trust-building that the viewSender inventors had to create an entirely new product for just one of the employee benefits it made possible - telecommuting. Their pcTelecommute product, built on the same technologies as viewSender, helps build the trust necessary so that employers who would never have considered letting employees work from home can now confidently allow staff to telecommute one to five days a week. Good for the employer, good for the environment, good for the family... and great for the employee!

6. Keeps everyone honest

May we all take a moment to remember Cliff Claven, late of Cheers... Cliff and his imitators are no more, undone by the Internet. Now, no matter the authority with which an obscure statistic is rendered as fact, its validity can be checked in seconds by anyone with a notebook, netbook, or cell phone and a connection to the World Wide Web.

Humor aside, there are those in the workplace who would use dishonesty to gain advantage over a fellow employee in the pursuit of a raise, more responsibility, or newly opened position. Subtle and not-so-subtle accusations, rumor, and shadings of the truth have undermined employees who were deserving of better. The viewSender computer monitoring system, even the simple knowledge that it has been deployed, can prevent distortions of the truth in the workplace, and offer a defense when falsehoods become a barrier to an employee's career or reputation (viewSender captured data is generally not made available to anyone other than system administrators, but can be accessed if the need is great enough).

7. Not hurting anyone? Be yourself!

Contrary to what you may think, working in an environment where reasonable rules of behavior are fairly and evenly enforced has a liberating quality - the sense of security and stability allows room to express yourself in positive ways. Bar owners know this as the "bouncer" effect - a club's patrons are more likely to report having a good time when staffed with visible but unobtrusive bouncers. [I can't believe I worked a reference to bars into a serious discussion of workplace computer monitoring - methinks I need to get a life!]

The effect is even more apparent in the workplace. Managers who are not in command of what is going on in the work environment are both unaware of problems affecting employee production, and subject to the kneejerk spewing of edicts and punishment when an issue does belatedly come to light. Some organizations suffer from nature filling a vacuum - in the absence of competent and informed oversight by the intended supervisors, fiefdoms and feudal kingdoms spring up centered on the strong personalities among the employees. These shadow governments can lead to rivalries, office politics, and challenges for the non-members trying to negotiate both the formal and informal chains of command.

Deployment of the viewSender tools reduces these competitions, keeps management confident and well-informed on relevant matters (and out of the employees' hair), and helps keep the decision-making pathways uncluttered and obvious. All of these results help the employee focus on the task at hand and create an atmosphere where those who choose to do so can truly enjoy their jobs.

8. Got an issue? viewSender has your back

We've described the positive effect the viewSender monitoring system can have in keeping fellow employees honest - we've not described how viewSender monitoring can support the employee when it is his or her credibility or integrity being questioned.

viewSender monitoring is a silent, neutral witness to most of the computer activity that occurs in a monitored network. It cannot directly report human interactions that occur off the computer screen, but it does accurately record the reactions, thought processes, and memories of participants and observers as they discuss events using computer applications. Even though an employee may not have direct access to what viewSender sees (out of respect for the privacy of all employees), those who have proper authority and credentials will be able to verify a sequence of events as reported by an employee through viewSender records.

We've touched on the subject a little in the sections on discrimination and harassment in the workplace, but there are other areas where you may need a boost of confidence that viewSender has captured a version of the same information you are seeing or receiving. Innocently witnessing a violation of ethics or law (and worse, being seen witnessing a violation of ethics or law) can immediately put you, your job, your career, and your reputation at extreme risk if you don't have a means to back you up if you report it. Without or without viewSender monitoring (more so with), if you don't report the ethics violation, you are also at risk of being caught up with the corrupt people you are protecting.

In addition to corroborating an honest employee in any kind of "he said, she said" dispute, the deployment of viewSender along with the knowledge it is in use helps prevent these kinds of attacks on a sincere person's credibility in the first place. And, in deploying viewSender, the organization broadcasts its commitment to its ethics policies and demonstrates confidence in the integrity of its employees.

9. Early warning system for bad management decisions

If you work for someone else long enough, it will happen to you... you will struggle implementing an inexperienced manager's brilliant idea, loved by his or her supervisors but absolutely unworkable in practice. The quandary: How do you communicate safely that the wunderkind's brainchild is an absolute disaster before severe damage is done to the project, the customer, or the department.

Sadly, this is a task that most often gets relegated to the "not in my job description" bin. Employees will certainly talk about it - no one likes to do things that make no sense - between themselves around the water cooler and in the break room, but there will be dead silence or awkward attempts at casual conversation only anytime the originator of the idea is within earshot.

The viewSender monitoring system can rectify all of that, eliminating the discomfort for a motivated employee who wants to solve the problem but doesn’t want to lose their job merely because they bruised their manager's ego. It can also significantly reduce the time all employees must suffer a bad idea.

viewSender can non-invasively poll communications applications for keywords associated with a new policy, gauging the acceptance and mood, and getting honest reactions from employees without putting the employees individually on the spot. This capability allows managers to tweak or remove ineffective or costly programs and procedures before they cause inordinate harm.

And let's not forget that the manager is someone's employee, too - in a truly even-handed system, he or she is also subject to monitoring and also aware that his or her actions and attitudes may be subject to later review. Whatever his or her faults, managers aren't any more interested than anyone else in making CLMs (career limiting moves).

10. Better fair than not

Unfortunately, Pandora has opened her box and there's no way to stuff the escapees back in. A modern business must protect itself and its resources in order to minimize its costs and return a profit to its stakeholders, and it must make some reasonable effort to understand what its computer systems and networks are being used for.

As employees, it’s difficult to acknowledge that not all of our brethren are as reasonable, harmless, reliable, well-intentioned, well-motivated, well-educated, nice-to-be-around, hardworking, and happy to be here as we are (smile). The reality is that when an employee lacks one or more of those qualities, things can, and sometimes do, go horribly, horribly wrong.

We stand in our employer's building, surrounded by his or her equipment, furniture, lighting, carpet, advertising, uniforms, plumbing, business ideas, intellectual property, and corporate culture. When something goes wrong, the damage is going to happen to something that rightfully belongs to the employer. And, like it or not, what damages the employer damages us as employees - there's that much smaller a pool from which to pay salaries, raises or benefits, and that much less time to spend on vacations, snow days, or company picnics. So, you could make a case that even the basic concept of workplace computer monitoring is in the employee's best interest as a deterrent and as a means for fairly resolving problems.

But there is a matter of degree. Crude tools like those described in our other blog (http://hubpages.com/hub/Workplace-computer-security) may do more harm than good - the costs of human labor, the mistakes inherent to human review, the lack of privacy (also a function of human review), the unreliability of the tool's accuracy, completeness, or audit trail, the inability to search across different types of data, and the absence of any sophisticated algorithms or filtering capability may make such systems more trouble that they are worth, and may defeat the sense of confidence and security intended for both the employer and the employee.

A comprehensive, well-designed, human-friendly automated trust-building tool like viewSender costs far less to the employer and offers far more return to everyone with a vested interest in computer monitoring - none more so than the employee.

Summary

A good computer monitoring tool is akin to the old-fashioned notion of the unarmed London bobby who walks through the neighborhood periodically. Of course, no one wants to be arrested (though if you deserve it, you are on your own) or falsely accused of a crime, and certainly no one wants a police officer coming through your door uninvited and for no reason during the family supper hour. We created a substantial body of law to make sure that basic rules are in place to protect us from these kinds of abuses, just as a good monitoring system is carefully designed with consideration for morale, privacy, the rightful needs of the employer, and in general improving the quality of the workplace for everyone.

That having been said, there is no better feeling when you are in trouble than knowing a policeman is a short distance away, that he or she is charged with applying the law fairly, and that they can be counted on to do the right thing even if a less-courageous person might not. When you are in the right but outnumbered by people who think differently, what better arbiter than the neutral and experienced observer and reporter of facts embodied in your neighborhood policeman? When you are in the wrong, but came by that position by accident or through honest mistake, who better to protect you from the gathering mob?

Regardless you feelings towards law enforcement or workplace computer monitoring, both are inescapable facts of life and here to stay. The most important factor in either (a variable you can influence) is the quality of the service provider, and ultimately the service, you receive. Honesty, integrity, fairness, thoroughness, access, stability, evenhandedness, dependability, and respect for the human being are components of police officers and workplace computer monitoring tools that will affect, in the first case, the quality of your life, and in the second, your satisfaction with your job, your opportunities within the organization, and your sense of confidence and security at work.

You owe it to yourself to approach the subject of workplace computer monitoring as you would any other element of the workplace environment, even as you would an employee benefit. Prior to accepting a position, you should ask what kind of system is in place and whether it has some of the employee-friendly features incorporated into the viewSender monitoring system. If your sense is that the employer is not open to discussing workplace computer monitoring (or denies it is in place), you may have to ask discreetly (you may be able use the Internet to locate current and past employees to question). I must say I personally would view any lack of openness about workplace computer monitoring by an employer to be a red flag, and the absence of any monitoring at all would concern me equally.

If you are already employed, you will want to learn about your company's computer monitoring tools and practices, though in some environments (probably most of them at the time of this writing) you'll need to do so carefully.

To safely broach the subject of workplace computer monitoring in either situation without making it appear as though you are worried about being caught doing something bad, frame it in the context of reasonable concern for general safety and security of all employees in light of the recent workplace attacks (sadly, there's always a recent one in the news - at the time of this writing, it is a female professor in Alabama killing three colleagues and injuring three when she was told she was being denied tenure).

In either case, if the workplace monitoring environment in place at your current or potential employer does not offer the protections, fairness, access or other features of a robust, trust-building monitoring system, lobby (with your fellow employees if feasible) to have it changed to something better (rather than eliminated), not from an adversarial or even negative standpoint, but from the viewpoint of the benefits to both the employer and employee. If you are one of those "rock stars" who has been recruited into a position, use your leverage to ensure a system is in place that will allow you to continue your winning ways, making it a condition of your employment if necessary and possible.

Finally, perhaps the craziest thought of all - some employees may want to monitor themselves for protective or professional reasons. For example, forward-thinking stockbrokers may want to self-monitor to ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (or to defend against potential accusations). Lawyers, CPA's, financial services professionals, and upper management of large companies may wish to self-monitor as a backstop for any future questions of ethical behavior. Consultants and contractors may have a two-fold justification for self-monitoring - first, to provide support if there arises any question about their work product or performance, and secondly, to familiarize future clients with their work style and habits. viewSender staff is drafting a set of minimum monitoring criteria that will establish industry-wide monitoring standards to satisfy these special cases. viewSender is anticipating offering customized product packaging and pricing to support the self-monitoring professional, consultant, or employee.

About viewSender products

The viewSender pcOversight products are engineered for small business, corporations, institutions, and government entities. These products are optimized for Ethernet backbone as well as Internet deployment, and can scale to accommodate the largest and smallest of organizations.

For more about viewSender's commercial products (including their pcTelecommute product, which turns the idea of workplace monitoring on its ear and renders telecommuting a viable option for virtually any employment situation), see our website at http://www.viewSender.com.

As the viewSender product offerings near completion, the viewSender team is actively seeking financing, distribution partnerships, and sales/marketing opportunities. If you would like to speak to someone about any of these topics, please send an e-mail to me at ScottDeaver@hotmail.com.

^{Copyright 2010 F. Scott Deaver and Two's Complement LLC - all rights reserved.}

[Scott Deaver is a software engineer and systems architect with over twenty-two years of corporate enterprise computing and consulting experience. He has authored numerous computer applications and networks requiring fail-safe operation, high performance, and/or tight security. These include the Air-to-Ground Voice System (AGVS) for NASA's space shuttle and international space station programs on behalf of Lockheed Martin as well as SOLA's satellite uplink rain-fade attenuation software. He has produced state-of-the-art software and has several utility patents pending specific to workplace computer monitoring, including two for Caller ID for E-mail and four for Two's Complement's viewSender project.]