Employers lose more than they gain by insisting upon access to employee’s emailaccessing employees' emails

How would you feel if one day your manager tellstold you that hehe/she could have access to your workingwork emails ? This is what happened to the employees of a toy company near Montreal had to undergo when histhe manager, Mr. Quinn, decided to install a softwersoftware that monitors both the web sites his employees browse, bothand every email-messageemail or message sent orand received. Whatever the reason to do so, this decisondecision has raised ethical questions. Should menagersmanagers have the right to access to such information, or should it be considered as anan illegal practice? There are different aspects to consider while consideringabout this issue.

On the one hand, employers state that installing such hardware coulda similar software would discourage employees to sendfrom sending emails for personal activitiesreasons that waste company limethe company's time and bandwithbandwidth. By knowing they’re being checked, they’d probabilyprobably avoid to send oversize e-mailssending oversized emails which put servers under strain, badly affecting the whole company’s workwork of the whole company. Moreover, keeping track of emails could protect the company’s reputation from the legal consequences that an emailemails containing hurting or offensive words, such as a sexist label, may ariseentail.

On the other hand, lawerslawyers have argued that the use of such monitoring systems could be abused. In fact, if employees are not informed that they’re being checked, the practice could become a way to “spy on” people’s private lifelives rather than just a way to ease work . Not only butFurthermore, employees might feel insicure about the use enterprisesthat companies could make of such datasdata. For instance, a network manager could make public sensitive information or taking offense at an email message, with the effect of jeopardizing one’s career.