CELPIP Speaking Task 7 sample answers — bands 10, 11, 12

Transcript

In my opinion, companies should trust their employees rather than monitor their internet use. The first reason is that monitoring does not really measure work. If someone finishes a project on time and does it well, it does not matter if they looked at the news for ten minutes. What matters is the result, not the browser history. Many people also work better when they take short breaks. My second reason is about trust. When employees know that somebody is watching every website, the atmosphere in the office changes. People start to feel like suspects instead of professionals, and in my experience the good employees are the ones who leave first when that happens. Of course, I understand the company's side. There are security risks, and some websites can bring viruses or leak information. So I would accept blocking dangerous sites, and I think that is reasonable. But watching what every person clicks on, all day, is different. That is not security, that is control. I believe managers should judge people by their work, and only look deeper if there is a real problem.

Transcript

I come down firmly on the side of trusting employees, though with one exception I will come to. My main reason is that monitoring measures the wrong thing. It tells you how long a screen was open, not whether the work was any good. I have worked with people who never opened a browser and produced very little, and with people who read the news for twenty minutes and then delivered something excellent. If a manager cannot tell the difference without software, the problem is the manager, not the browsing. The second reason is what monitoring does to a workplace. The moment people know every click is logged, they stop experimenting, they stop asking questions in writing, and the good ones quietly start looking elsewhere. You end up keeping exactly the employees who do not mind being watched, which is not the group you want to keep. The exception is security. Blocking known malicious sites, protecting client data, logging access to sensitive systems — that is not surveillance, that is basic hygiene, and no reasonable employee objects. But tracking what individuals read all day is a different thing, and it usually says more about the company than the staff.

Transcript

Trust, with a narrow and well-defined exception — and I think the exception is where this debate actually lives. The case against monitoring is not really about privacy, it is about measurement. Logging software tells you a screen was open. It cannot tell you whether the person was solving the problem or avoiding it, and any manager who needs a dashboard to work that out has already lost the thread. Half an hour of apparent idleness is sometimes the most productive part of a difficult day. The second cost is slower and harder to see. Once people know every click is recorded, behaviour narrows. They stop asking naive questions, stop poking at unfamiliar tools, stop leaving a trail that could be misread. You do not get a more diligent workforce, you get a more cautious one, and caution is expensive in ways that never appear in a report. Where I do agree: protect client data, block known threats, log access to systems that hold other people's information. Nobody sensible calls that surveillance. The distinction I would hold to is between protecting the company and inspecting the person. The first is an obligation. The second is a management failure with a software licence attached.