Keep a Business Eye on E-Workers
The potential for invasion of employee privacy is greater if the employee is permitted to, and actually does, store confidential and personal information in the electronic communication and information systems. As such, the employer ideally should limit the use of its systems to business purposes and the information stored there to business information.
A practical approach is to state that telephones, voicemail, and e-mail are tools to conduct company business, are not intended for non-business use, and any such use should not be considered private in that the company reserves the right to monitor any information on its electronic systems.
Prohibit misuse of electronic communication systems and reserve the right to take appropriate disciplinary or termination action for violations. This rule would prohibit derogatory, obscene, defamatory, sexual, and other content unrelated to business. It also would prohibit sending or receiving copyrighted material without permission or accessing any inappropriate material on the Internet.
Prohibit transmission of information to anyone who does not have a legitimate need to know as part of the employer’s operations. This rule would be an adjunct to a broader company policy obligating employees to maintain confidentiality regarding the companys proprietary information during and after their employment relationships end.
Employers should have their employees sign an acknowledgment of receipt of the policies described above.
In addition, to reduce the risk of litigation, employers should narrowly tailor any monitoring procedures to achieve only the limited purposes that justify the intrusion. These might include retrieving information for business purposes, purging older or unneeded information, preventing the use of the systems for improper or unlawful purposes, maintaining the confidentiality of trade secrets and other proprietary business information, or investigating suspected employee misconduct.
