Closed circuit television or more commonly known as CCTV are an increasingly common item in homes and offices. It is simply the use of a video camera to transmit the video captured by the camera to a location for the viewing pleasure of the user. It is mainly used for surveillance of a particular area which the CCTV is monitoring. The cost of a CCTV varies a lot, with a low end one costing about $600 plus, while a high end one can cost up to $1700. A CCTV mainly consists of a small video camera, a recorder, and a hard disk of a fixed memory space.

To look for a suitable CCTV, one has to ask oneself what one needs it for and what does one want to monitor. Then one may need to think through the specifications of the CCTV, such as the transmission method, image quality, type of camera, frame rates, lighting, display monitors, storage capacity & recording. Following up is the installation which one can install by oneself or by calling a professional to do so. The last step is to assess the performance of it, in particular, one should test for the camera’s area of vision, quality of the recording, and lastly the motion detection and operation of the alarms.

Now, why would someone pay so much for a small video camera with a recorder? Why of course, it’s for surveillance purposes! However, there are different reasons for surveillance. At households, it could be to monitor events such as home burglary, petty theft by maids, to help respond to emergencies at home when one has family members with serious medical conditions, and even monitoring a full time maids’ work throughout the day. At the office, it could be to monitor theft of property, criminal damage, business crime, undesirable activities at the workforce and lastly to monitor the work rate or efficiency of the employees at the office, which could be used as training aid as a means to improve productivity.

At homes, there may not be much of a privacy issue as after all, as the owner of the house, you have the rights to decide if you want to install a CCTV system in your own home. On the other hand, it is very different at the office. If handled improperly, the installation of CCTV at the office may lead to negative social response from the employees.

When the employees see their boss installing CCTV, the natural assumption to make is that the boss does not trust his or her employees and it may lead to resentment, and may even reduce work productivity. It is always better to be open with the employees as to the reasons for the installation of the CCTV. Your motives may not be entirely pure when installing the CCTV but try to win your staff over with the idea rather letting the idea that big brother is watching sink into them.

Whatever the case, CCTV has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages especially at the office. It is good to think through all these issues first before deciding on installing or to forgo it.