Personal Use of Computers at Work

The people in the modern world live and work in the digital era. Thus, the frequent usage of innovative technological devices, such as computers, tablets, laptops, is present in the workplace. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of workers in the United States of America utilize computers at work on the regular basis. Thus, most employers should establish the special corporate policy, which dictates the necessary rules all employees must follow in technology conduct. More and more companies raise concern about the issue of computer use and data security. The particular concern is  the question of time allocation for employees to use company’s technology for their personal purposes. The company’s computer policy is a set of regulations and limitations, which aim to ensure the effective performance of workers and sound environment within the workplace.

Undoubtedly, the employees are overwhelmed by the use of computers in the workplace. At the same time, workers acquire more duties and responsibilities in the technology use methods. For example, employees cannot use their social network accounts during the work time. The social resources may be the place to share different kind of information and content. Thus, the employers must be aware of the possible data leaks and discuss the privacy issues with the supervisees.

One of the primary duties of an employer is the regular communication with employees. In the technology-savvy world, the necessary action is to present a business with computer ethics. Otherwise, the workers may start using company technology for personal use or misuse. The employees of any successful corporation must sign the contracts with claims that a personal computer is not for entertainment but fulfillment of the job duties.

The corporations have the right to fire employees for personal use of work data and devices. Therefore, the business developers advise the chief executives to launch their own company’s software security application. The project will increase employees’ performance, and help develop a company’s own culture. The recommendation to employer is to introduce the app, which can satisfy the employees’ needs (Oz, 2006).

The present-day leaders and heads of companies speak more about the kind of spying on employees’ activities, particularly concerning the usage of technology at work. The question of whether employers have the right to monitor the staff closely arises, which causes privacy concerns. Some organizations provide employees with the corporate phones for utilizing at work. Moreover, the use of personal phones may have tracking, especially if a worker is peaking on the phone endlessly. When the employee misuses the working time, he or she can be strictly fined. Certain regulations to usage of personal computer also restrict the rights of employees. Definitely, the company should restrict employees’ in checking private accounts and messages. Thus, an employer has to control the information stored in a computer. The example is the situation that happened in New Jersey in 2010. An employee was sending private messages by means of a company’s laptop. He/she used the password-protected account on Yahoo. The court proved that, although the messages were under the protection of attorney client privilege, they did not actually address the privacy issue. The employee privacy cases are numerous in the corporate environment. Yet, an employer has the right to monitor the staff data usage, in accordance with the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986. The law describes the privacy rights of the employees and employers, including the cases of criminal responsibility while invading employees’ privacy (Bussing, 2009). Another case occurred in Canada, when a bank employee Jones Tsige has been tracking the confidential information of his ex-husband’s partner for 174 times, rudely violating the rules and corporate laws of a bank (Wilkinson & Formosa, 2012).

The inappropriate use of personal computers may not only lead to fines applied to an employee, but also result to the loss of productivity in the corporation. Thus, the computer code of conduct improves the organizational efficiency. The lack of knowledge on how to control effectively the use of computers causes the broken equipment, violations of moral conduct, and disproportional job duties among the employees. Workers have to understand that control of Internet and e-mail usage involves monitoring, which is an essential part of corporate ethics. Thus, their Web browsing is neither confidential, nor private. In order to avoid the problems, both parties have to agree on the restrictions, and potential implementation of financial liability (Muhl, 2003).

Any firm, company, corporation and enterprise aims to introduce the safety and security management. Every employee must be aware of his or her responsibilities to ensure saving important corporate and private information, so that no stranger has access to it. The worker, under no circumstance, should harass or offend other employees by using corporate emails, exchange confidential administrative data, spend a lot of time playing games, searching the Internet, or access prohibited pornographic or criminal sites. Moreover, both employers and employees should maintain all the passwords secured. An employee has to put every effort to decrease the excessive Internet traffic, so there is no computer crash in functioning of the whole system (Masrom et al., 2010).

In general, it is of paramount significance to establish the computer ethics and ground rules. However, there are different cases of data security, and employees need the preparation for implementation of certain number of rules, otherwise the code is not likely to have any considerable effect. Definitely, it is nearly impossible to create the perfect setting, where employees do not want to use personal computers for their own benefit. Nevertheless, it is possible to minimize the issues to its least amount. Thus, several researchers and entrepreneurs confirm that computer ethics code requires defining scenarios, so that workers understand various situations and become more serious about proper followership of policy. The only way to teach employees to value the company’s equipment is to push correct rules in the enterprise, often hold meetings and debates relating to the item, set a good strategy for constant learning and improvement, and define reinforcement strategies.