Companies monitoring e-mails - please grade/provide feedback

[gmat_prep]

ESSAY QUESTION:“Companies should be prohibited from monitoring e-mail correspondence of their employees, since this policy destroys the atmosphere of trust and undermines employee morale.”

From your perspective, how accurate is the above statement? Support your position with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
RESPONSE: The issue is that should the companies be prohibited from monitoring the e-mails of their employees. I strongly believe that there should not be any restrictions on the companies on monitoring their employees' e-mails.

Many companies, like the investment banks, have a lot of confidential data that they cannot afford to loose as it may result in a huge monetory loss for them. Since the employees are aware of the fact that there are heavy panelties for communicating this data to people external to the company, monitoring the e-mails will ensure that this data is not leaked. Moreover, the employees stay alert, if the monitoring is in place, that they do not provide any such data to external parties by mistake.

I believe that the employee's morale should not be affected by this policy unless he or she is planning to go against the company and share the confidential data with untrusted parties. On the contrary, they should understand that there might be just a few employees who could misuse this liberty and cause the company a big loss and hence, have a negative impact on other employees' salaries.

I agree that some employees may not like their e-mail corresponse being monitored but such employees should understand the businesses run for profit and big profits result in big salaries for the employees themselves. In short, the companies cannot afford to put all their employees at risk because of a few bad employees and hence, the company has to make a trade-off in this situation.