Big Brother moves into the workplace

By Selwyn Parker

They're listening in.

The surveillance methods of major companies here and abroad are rapidly catching up with employees' ease in communicating with customers, suppliers and colleagues.

New Zealand organisations have increasingly adopted the United States practice whereby checks on e-mail messages and electronic monitoring of communications such as phone calls are rising rapidly.

According to the American Management Association, the share of major American firms that routinely survey e-mail sent by staff has jumped from 15 per cent to 27 per cent in the last two years.

Over the same period, electronic monitoring has risen from 35 per cent to 45 per cent, most of it through spot checks.

Monitoring usually means that e-mails, telephone conversations, voice mail, computer files and video recordings of employees are stored and reviewed on a systematic basis.

As in New Zealand, the most electronically surveyed industries are banking, brokerage and insurance, all of which are subject to comprehensive regulation.

New Zealand's privacy laws, which are steadily coming to terms with electronic surveillance, generally uphold the right of employers to monitor staff electronically because it can be very much in the interests of both.

However, in most cases staff should be advised of the circumstances of the monitoring.

Although there don't appear to be any comparable studies here, in the United States almost 84 per cent of surveyed firms tell their employees details of any surveillance.

* Contributing writer Selwyn Parker is available at wordz@xtra.co.nz