Question

Question: Justification/Recommendation Report – Read the information presented below to develop a comprehensive media use policy for your company. Research the web to find out what other companies have done to adopt such suitable policies. Describe suitable policies in your report. Include computer monitoring and surveillance software, instant messaging use, social networking sites, blogging sites, and smartphone use. Write a convincing justification/recommendation report based upon the conclusions you made from your research from the information you learned in Chapter 9.

As a manager in a mid-sized engineering firm, you are aware that members of your department frequently use e-mail, social networking sites, instant messaging, and texting for private messages, shopping, and games. In addition to the strain on computer facilities, you worry about declining productivity, security problems, and liability issues. When you walked by one worker’s computer and saw what looked like pornography on the screen, you knew you had to do something. Although workplace privacy is a controversial issue for unions and employee rights groups, employers have legitimate reasons for wanting to know what is happening on their computers or during the time they are paying their employees to work. A high percentage of lawsuits involve the use and abuse of e-mail and increasingly more often other media as well. You think that the executive council should establish some kind of e-mail, Web use, and social media policy. The council is generally receptive to sound suggestions, especially if they are inexpensive. At present, no explicit media use policy exists, and you fear that the executive council is not fully aware of the dangers. You decide to talk with other managers about the problem and write a justification/recommendation report

Answer 1

As a manager in a mid-sized engineering firm, you are aware that members of your department frequently use e-mail, social networking sites, instant messaging, and texting for private messages, shopping, and games.
Our steps:-

1. Employers should also be aware of the potential pitfalls of monitoring. You could create a morale problem and hurt employee performance if your workers feel a distrustful Big Brother is lurking over their shoulders. You could inadvertently learn about people's religion, sexual orientation, political views and medical problems, creating potential privacy dilemmas or even opening your firm up to discrimination lawsuits.
2. you could run afoul of the National Labor Relations Board if you discipline employees for making negative comments about you online. A year ago, it issued guidelines affirming employees' right to discuss and seek to improve their working conditions, following a number of cases involving social media.

3.surveillance, defined as tracking an individual's activities, has "a creepy factor" that can cause pushback from employees, he says. Avoid such trouble by engaging only in focused surveillance of a person if you have well-founded suspicions of policy or legal violations and have the documented agreement of top managers and your attorney.

4. The process of General monitoring for electronic abuses, with employees' full knowledge, is a necessary practice, Flynn says. "It's a fact of business life that legal risks exist, regulatory risks exist," she says. "Employees will put your business at risk accidentally or intentionally. You need to mitigate those risks" and keep misdeeds from turning into expensive crises or lawsuits.

5. The way in company generally, employers have the right to monitor their employees use of the Internet (including visiting social networking sites, checking e-mails, and instant messaging) on computers owned by the employer, during employees on-duty hours. Although federal laws prohibits employers from discriminating against a prospective or current employee based on information on the employee's social networking site or personal blog relating to their race, color, national origin, gender, age, disability, and immigration or citizen status, employers can and do use information on such websites as a method of conducting background checks. Employees should therefore be conscious of what information they display on social media websites.