GMAT Essays (AWA)

This is my first ever Issue essay. Please suggest changes and things I need to improve.


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.

YOUR RESPONSE:
In this age of Information Technology, the automation has seeped into both our professional and our personal lives. We use electronic mails as much for official purposes as for personal use. The statement above claims that monitoring this personal usage of an employee has a negative impact on the trust and employee morale, the two important pillars of employee retention. I disagree with this ideology.

Firstly, a responsible employee understands that the company tries its best to maintain a personal and work life balance for its employees. This does not mean that the employees start using the company premises and company's facilities to satisfy there personal requirements. In a recent study in Gurgaon based IT companies, the servers of the companies had 20-30 % data that was for personal use of employees. The cost of running those servers was bore by the respective organizations. Not only that data was adding to the cost it was adding to the wastage of electricity (used to keep the servers up), increased maintenance cost, wastage of space and increased exploitation of resources (as most of the company data is taken on a back up and kept in a server outside the city for safeguarding against unforeseen loss of data)

Secondly, there has been an upswing in the IT and finance related frauds. With Ramalinga Raju of Satyam sending tremors in the Indian IT industry with the biggest Indian fraud, the importance of security has taken the front seat. Such frauds can easily take place if the information passed by an employee is not monitored. To block such loop holes in the security and the confidentiality, such measures deserve great importance.

Lastly, the monitoring of e-mails also deters the mischievous employees to send emails with content that is not considered suitable. Not monitoring the emails may lead to such content being circulated amongst the employees. This would perturb the decorum of the office.

Although there are the above mentioned ill effects of not monitoring the emails, a complete check may sometime lead to a loss of trust amongst the employees. The best-way out is to sample check the emails (also to check heavy emails). So that the miscreants are wary about mailing inappropriate and security related mails. And also if a complete check is adapted a lot of man-hours and resources would have to be spent on it. A sample check will be a win-win situation for both the company and the employees.

Guys I am in desperate need of this favor. Please rate the essay. And tell me the weak areas. I have less than a weeks time for my shot at the GMAT.

I am eagerly waiting for someone amongst you to rate this and review it for me.

Experts your comments are more than welcome. Please help me tune this up. I hope you understand the urgency I am showing. I am less than a week away from my Examination and A.W.A. is the last thing I should be worried about.

Hi Pratik ,

I have a feedback to give .To me your Essay seems to be good ...but it ca n certainly impreov on some points .

1, Your example of Gurgaon seems to be created one .You can make it acc to survey made in IT cirties of India something like that ...Also , I feel your example should be more relevant one ...ramalinga Raju example is an IT fraud in account books not a security breach .

2. You should have para 4 as something that you are also refuting the people who are in support .That will give more standing to your essay .

3.your commas and punctuations need some improvement.

However , good part is your essay shows a continuous flow of thought .

I would rate as 4.5

Hi Pratik ,

I have a feedback to give .To me your Essay seems to be good ...but it ca n certainly impreov on some points .

1, Your example of Gurgaon seems to be created one .You can make it acc to survey made in IT cirties of India something like that ...Also , I feel your example should be more relevant one ...ramalinga Raju example is an IT fraud in account books not a security breach .

2. You should have para 4 as something that you are also refuting the people who are in support .That will give more standing to your essay .

3.your commas and punctuations need some improvement.

However , good part is your essay shows a continuous flow of thought .

I would rate as 4.5