— TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
work in progress
BY SUSAN COUNTRYMAN
ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD DOWNS
BROTHER
Your employer may be monitoring
your electronic activity at work.
picking up a book
from Amazon or shooting an email to a
friend? If you’re doing it from the office, you might want to think again. Your company could be reading
your email, monitoring which web sites you surf, and snooping through your computer files. Consider
that nearly 75 percent of companies are electronically monitoring their employees, according to a survey
by the American Management Association (AMA). And don’t let those passwords fool you—the law is
on employers’ side. Right now, outside of listening to your personal phone calls and keeping cameras
in the bathrooms, companies have full legal rein to monitor their workers. (Legislation currently
pending in Congress would compel companies to let employees know if their activities are monitored.)