Reading Your Folders, over Your Shoulder

There's no presumption of privacy in the workplace - especially regarding email.

However, the boss looking over your shoulder and reviewing even the most trivial communications is a bit creepy which is what that situation sounds like. Not a good way to inspire confidence, risk taking and entrepreneurial behavior....

I can see the mitigating aspects of reading email - to prevent unwanted leaking of sensitive information.

I think the other side isn't very good. How would a manager let an employee know that something there communicating in an email is a good thing, such as encouraging an idea that hasn't been presented directly?

That would really be creepy!!!

With today's information age it's even more difficult to provide information security in the work place. The boss has a legal obligation to monitor e-mail and other communications, not doing so would be negligent.

If there is an employee sending spam or harassing, threatening e-mails or confidential data via e-mail, that not only hurts the business but can cause the business serious legal problems. Wouldn't you want to know ahead of time before it's a serious PR problem?

That's why it is in the best interest of the company and employees to deploy communications monitoring. Then you can peruse corrective actions towards the employee(s) that are abusing the office communications for personal e-mails and other non-productive and destructive behaviours.

On another note I'm sure everyone has done some degree of personal e-mail/browsing etc from work. Me as well as any other boss will surly tolerate it to a degree without action. It's going to be the non-productive employee that's wasting the time doing personal tasks instead of business work that will be facing corrective actions.

I'm not saying that everything the employee does should be read every day, that's an incredible waste of resources! Just that there should be a paper trail (archive file) and that occasional non-scheduled monitoring should be done.