How Companies Monitor Work Emails of Employees?
Email monitoring is an integral part of employee monitoring. No matter the company is big or small, it has deployed several different forms of employee monitoring tools in the workplace. With these monitoring tools, employers can keep a regular check on their employees’ activities while they are at work.
Employees cannot expect to compose private email messages at work. When they are working, they are asked to use company email addresses. They need to keep in mind that their work emails are regularly monitored by their employers because employers have a lot of leeway to monitor work emails.
Advanced technology has helped employers keep track of all the workplace communications of their employees. Monitoring emails is one of the important forms of employee monitoring systems. With the right email monitoring software, employers can read and review their employees’ work emails. According to a survey conducted by the American Management Association (AMA), it was found that s43% of companies monitor employee email while 28% of them had fired an employee for misusing work email.
Employers take a keen interest in knowing what their employees are writing in the work emails. One of the reasons is to avoid legal liability. Employers can hand over the work emails in case one of the employees attempt to sue them. The same AMA survey revealed that 15% of the companies had faced a lawsuit caused by employee email.
Work Emails Are Not Private
Employees should not forget that all the emails exchanged through the company email account are not private. At the time of joining the company, the employee is informed that their work emails will be monitored by the company. They are provided with an employee handbook where it is clearly mentioned that their work email is not private and that the company will be monitoring both incoming and outgoing emails.
Employers are legally free to monitor employee emails as long as they have valid reasons to do so. Even if the company has not informed employees beforehand about employee email monitoring or has not provided them with an employee handbook at the time of hiring them, they still have the legal right to track emails exchanged through the company email accounts.
Some companies have installed email monitoring systems in the workplace in such a way that all the work emails are designated as confidential or employees are allowed to create a private password for their work email account that is only known to them.
How Companies Monitor Work Emails?
If we look at the employee monitoring definition, we come to realize that employee monitoring is the process of keeping track of employees’ activities in the workplace with the help of different forms of employee monitoring tools.
Most companies use employee monitoring tools that come in the form of computer software, mobile application, or GPS location tracking device. Employers install monitoring apps or tracking devices on the company equipment (for example laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, and vehicles) handed to the employees and keep a check on their activities.
Popular monitoring apps such as Mobistealth offers advanced monitoring solution to the employers. For instance, this monitoring app also provides a complete employee monitoring solution. Employers just need to install this monitoring software on the employee’s device and they’re good to go.
Once the monitoring app is installed on the employee’s device, the employer can keep track of all the activities taking place on that particular device. The monitoring app records and monitors all the activities on the employee’s device and transports the logged data to the online user account that is mostly operated and handled by the employer himself or his company’s management team.
The monitoring app is capable of monitoring all incoming and outgoing work emails, text messages, instant chats, and phone calls. It also helps in keeping track of web browsing and social media activities of employees.
The Mobistealth monitoring app also offers the keylogging feature that helps employers record all the keystrokes struck by the employees on their devices. With this feature, employers can also get their hands on the copies of email drafts that employees never sent. Therefore, if an employee assumes that he can get away easily by getting rid of those drafts or that email drafts can never be found by the company are completely wrong. All the keys that they press on their device are recorded and monitored by the company.
Some employers routinely monitor all the work emails sent and received by employees during office hours. For instance, most companies have email systems in the workplace that automatically copy and record all the emails that pass through them. On the other hand, some companies create backup copies of all the new email messages as soon as they arrive in the employee’s email account.
Employees Can Avoid Problems with Work Emails
An employee needs to learn to avoid problems with work email messages. They should treat their work emails in the same way as they do with other forms of communications such as business text messages and phone calls.
All employees need to limit the communications taking place in the office to work-related activities and also prevent from accessing personal emails on the company equipment. They should never exchange personal emails on the company-owned devices because all communication is being recorded by the employer. Never send an email to someone that you would be uncomfortable having your family member, colleague or employer read.
