Rumor has it that employees were downloading graphic images from pornography sites and e-mailing them to their colleagues. Days after the firings, Russell Lewis, the president and CEO of The New York Times, sent a memo to staffers across the company reminding them that management reserves the right to monitor e-mail and requesting that employees report violations to the HR department. The New York Times isn't the only company that has grown nervous about employee e-mail abuse.
Most corporate lawyers believe the trend is a good one.
Since employers can be held liable both for the e-mails employees send to one another and for the outbound messages they send, they would be fools, the lawyers argue, not to have monitoring policies and procedures in place. The lawyer business, however, is not undergoing the staffing crisis that plagues the IT industry. There are some 400,000 open IT positions out there, so organizations are doing their best to lure talented new workers with comfortable, trusting work environments along with high salaries and stock options. With the long hours often demanded of them, workers need to know that they can conduct some personal business, like refilling a prescription online or arranging to visit a marriage counselor, without letting their higher-ups in on their affairs. CIOs are in an especially tough spot.