Management e-mail monitoring brings ‘big brother’ to mind

Question:
Dear Joan,
     E-mail sent to me recently by an associate within the same company, was answered by my supervisor before I was able to answer it myself. There was nothing to indicate my supervisor was copied on the initial inquiry. Talking to my associate soon afterward, he too expressed surprise at the reply since no copy had been forwarded to this individual. The correspondence was one-to-one (we thought).
     A casual inquiry to someone in the I/S Department revealed that, yes, the functionality to monitor e-mail was readily available to certain levels of management. This was news to me and to the few others I have mentioned it to.
     I have no illusion about the law; there is no question that correspondence conducted on my employer’s computer system is their property and they may handle it at their discretion.
     A broader question, however, asks whether I should feel somewhat betrayed to know that this part of my work was monitored surreptitiously. The only way I became aware of this covert scrutiny was due to a careless, overzealous supervisor. My performance reviews have always been good, I have nothing to hide, but my confidence in my employer has been shaken and shows no sign of recovery. Any thoughts?

This is more a communications and employee relations issue than it is a legal issue, and I suspect that your relationship with your supervisor—and your employer—is seriously damaged.

You’re correct about your company’s legal right to monitor e-mail. “As a general rule, because computer systems are company property, companies can monitor e-mail,” agrees Julie Buchanan, Principal of Buchanan & Barry S.C. “Companies need to clearly inform employees that they should have no expectations of privacy. But what this appears to raise is the situation of an automatic copy to employees’ supervisors. If this is the case employees should know what is going on,” Buchanan explained.

It’s possible that the organization has a written policy but perhaps you don’t remember seeing it. However, if they spelled out what was going on, it’s surprising that you didn’t know about it, since a policy like this one is intrusive and it’s likely people would be talking about it.

If, indeed, your company automatically copies employees’ e-mails to each person’s supervisor, I have to wonder if those supervisors have enough to do. How could they possibly wade through all of that? Why would they need to? “It almost appears that this could be an overreaction on the part of the company to some past problem,” suggested Peggy Niemer, Vice President of Human Resources for Children’s Health System. Other professionals in HR and IS echoed her sentiments that this was “outrageous” and felt like a violation of the basic issue of respect for the individual.

The thing that really troubles me is the poor judgment on the part of the supervisor. At the very least, the supervisor should have come to you with any questions or comments about the issue, rather than responding himself. IS officers in several companies expressed the same concern.

Best practice for monitoring e-mail is usually more involved, they explained. For example, although a company reserves the right to look at e-mail, no one actually sits and goes through it on a regular basis. What typically happens is that a supervisor has reason to believe that an employee is doing something inappropriate. When the supervisor goes to the IS department, he or she will be redirected to the Human Resources department. Once the HR department gives the IS department the go ahead, the employee’s e-mail is collected and given to a designated person (often in HR) to monitor.

So what do you do now? You will probably be looking over your shoulder for other evidence of “big brother,” in the future, so I suspect that eventually you will leave. In the meantime, you lose nothing by talking with your supervisor. Explain that you were surprised by what happened and ask what his or her intentions were. Be sure to express how your supervisor’s actions made you feel. Hopefully, the policy will be modified to protect your employer’s rights without alienating everyone in the process.