Are you monitoring your employees’ email activity?

A recent survey reported that employers are likely to monitor emails in the workplace, web history and internal chat systems. The research examined responses from U.K. companies with over 500 employees, finding that 98% of companies monitor their employees’ digital activity.

Whilst most companies will have a policy on IT usage and monitoring in the workplace, outlining their expectations of staff and being open about monitoring certain activity, 11% of employees aren’t aware that their company captures digital activity at all. 11% of respondents said that employees would be “horrified” by the amount of digital activity their companies captured, while 65% of employees would be “concerned.”

Other results from the survey include:

• 87% of companies monitor email
• 70% look at web browser history
• 41% check work voicemail
• 34% look at Facebook or LinkedIn

Employees should be informed of any monitoring, its purposes and circumstances, and the level and areas of control that employees have over their data.