Negative Announcements on RoutineMatters: You can certainly sympathize with employeeswhen they complain about having their email and instant messagesmonitored, but you are implementing a company policy that allemployees agree to abide by when they join the company. Your firm,Webcor Builders of San Mateo, California, is one of the estimated60 percent of U.S. companies with such monitoring systems in place.More and more companies use these systems (which typically operateby scanning messages for keywords that suggest confidential,illegal, or otherwise inappropriate content) in an attempt to avoidinstances of sexual harassment and other problems.
As the chief information office, the manager in charge ofcomputer systems in the company, you’re often the target whenemployees complain about being monitored. Consequently, you knowyou’re really going to hear it when employees learn that themonitoring program will be expanded to personal blogs as well.
Your task: Write a memo to bedistributed to the entire workforce, explaining that the automatedmonitoring program is about to be expanded to include employees’personal blogs. Explain that, while you sympathize with employeeconcerns regarding privacy and freedom of speech, it is themanagement team’s responsibility to protect the company’sintellectual property and the value of the company name. Therefore,employees’ personal blogs will be added to the monitoring system toensure that employees don’t intentionally or accidentally exposecompany secrets or criticize management in a way that could harmthe company.
