Question

Is it ethical for a company that operates a telephone help desk to monitor its agents? Under what circumstances should this practice be permitted? Under what circumstances should this practice not be permitted?

Answer 1

The question of Employee Monitoring being ethical or unethical is a long debated topic. Its ethical nature is determined by the degree to which employees are monitored. How much privacy they have and what all actions of their are recorded determine if the monitoring can be termed as ethical. Ethical question arises if the employer is invading employee's private space.

For a company that operates a telephone help desk monitoring its agents become necessary when they are conversing with customers. Recording their calls and the computer activity is required for quality control and to ensure that agents are working to solve customer issues. Also video surveillance is very essential to ensure no internal theft etc. takes place. Under these situations, it is ethical and required to monitor employees.

But monitoring other things like personal calls etc. come under unethical practices. Also monitoring the personal searches, personal emails, SMS etc on computer other than the software used by company is part of invading private space and should be categorized as unethical.