Privacy of Employees

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Should employees have an expectation of a right to privacy in the workplace, e.g. electronic
monitoring of computer usage, phone calls, and video surveillance should be eliminated or
restricted. Why or why not.

The problem of occupational aggression, identity and property theft, reduced productivity and on
the job accidents and injuries is increasingly a cause for worry for employers. In combination
with growing lawsuit expenses, companies need to develop adequate means of minimizing such
risks. As a result, many businesses are now monitoring workforce in order to prevent accidents,
misbehavior and other losses. In order to protect themselves from these threats, organizations
must also balance their company's commercial objectives with reasonable expectations of their
workers' privacy. The problem is further complemented by technology, which allows companies
to monitor all workers' e-mail, Internet and telephone activity without even being aware that
employees are being observed.

Employers are legally obliged to provide their employees with a safe workplace and have also to
take reasonable actions to safeguard their assets. Employers must be guided by legitimate
business interests and common sense when using measures to achieve these different aims. In
maintaining workplace privacy, the responsibility of human resources professionals is to support
the establishment of effective and sustainable procedures to protect employers while reducing the
risk of employer liability.

The HR function plays a significant role in developing and using monitoring methods to alleviate
the daily issues of theft, safety violation and any other misconduct of employees, working with
legal, risk management and security specialists. HR should in particular ensure that the
monitoring process is selectively enforced, a legitimate business justification supports the
requirement of monitoring and employees do not understand the reasonable expectation of
privacy when they use equipment and systems provided by their employers such as computer
networks, telephones and payrollers. The HR should also help to ensure that monitoring
programs, in the middle of a syndicate campaign, do not breach collective negotiations or create
an environment of supervision.

In addition, businesses should involve the HR and law specialists at the early stage of workplace
monitoring and finally collaborate towards a corporate solution that is moral and transparent to
employees and understood. Finally, HR is critical to communicate the rules & procedures of the
company for the surveillance of the workplace and the protection of employee's privacy. In this
process, the role of HR is crucial to ensure employee confidence and collaboration.

Monitoring workplaces is subject to a range of constitutional rules and regulations, both federal
and state, as regards if and when employees are entitled to privacy and are to be informed of its
supervision. From a legal point of view, the intelligent strategy is to disclose monitoring.
Knowing that workers are being watched eliminates a reasonable expectation of confidentiality
from employees the factor that is typically the basis of common law infringement claims.

Although the foundation of the privacy claim varies according to competence, courts that have
taken the matter into consideration typically undertake factual investigation. They assess the
employee's reasonable expectations of privacy and whether the employer is legitimately
interested in monitoring. It is also helpful to disclose monitoring operations if the reasonableness
of workers' privacy expectation generally plays an important role in the analysis of a court. By
alerting workers about the lack of secure communication or the monitoring of their behavior, an
employer can decrease the expectations of the employees for privacy, and in turn strengthen the
defense of the company in court while reducing the repercussions on employee morals.

The benefits of computerized workplace communications are apparent. Electronic media are
frequently the best way for employees and between companies and their consumers to
communicate. The maintenance of an e-information network enables entrepreneurs to monitor
productivity, quality and efficiency of employees; nevertheless, the usage of e-mails, voicemails
and Internet by employees has created several issues in workplaces. For example, employees
may influence their productivity and profits through their personal usage of e-mail and the
Internet in company hours. Misuse of the electronic communication media by the employees
might, however, put companies at risk for legal responsibility and data security breaches (Lebek
et.al. 2013). Claims of sexual violence, discrimination, defamation, violation of copyright and
other misconduct resulting from abuse of computerized communications by employers may be
addressed to employers. The protection of business secrets and sensitive information should also
be an issue for employers.

In the usage of electronic media, employers ought to reflect employees' expectations of privacy.
For any of those concerns, companies must be aware of the discoverability of electronic
communications, yet workers who have sued their employers for privacy invasions on the basis
of email surveillance have typically failed to achieve much. The electronic monitoring
limitations do not extend to Internet usages because the use of websites does not involve
'communication.' Employers should nevertheless not run into this law if a clear policy governing
the appropriate use of the internet in the workplace is to be set up and implemented, expressly
without notice and reserves the right to monitor such use. Companies should include in addition
to this distinct monitoring policy, their sexual harassment and equal employment opportunities
rules should include banned Internet use.

Video monitoring is a typical tool that businesses utilize to monitor their workplace work. Many
businesses utilize video monitoring to minimize misbehavior for employees. If a workplace
occurs, video surveillance may potentially be proof of a crime. Employers must examine the
national legislation for that State, whether the surveillance area is a public or a private location, if
in addition to the visual surveillance the sound is collected, and if the camera is exposed or
hidden. Employers should not utilize video monitoring in locations where workers are
confidential.

Position monitoring includes employers tracking the location and movement of employees using
the GPS, initially created by military authorities. The technology employs satellites in the ground
which can detect the position to deliver signal to GPS receivers. Employee whereabouts in
corporate buildings and along city roads and highways can be determined. It may also be
assessed how fast personnel travel in their automobiles and trucks. These technologies may be
used by employers to enhance productivity and to create a safer and safer place of work. While
"any communication from the tracking unit" is excluded from the ECPA and is not expected to
apply to GPS monitoring, State regulations on privacy must be taken into account. As with other
concerns of confidentiality, notification to workers that GPS systems can track them while
operating significantly lowers the ability of an employee to assert a legitimate confidentiality
expectation and claims.

In addition, GPS in a car owned by employees runs the danger of joint law action to infringe and
break state limits with the supervision of the off-duty behaviour of employees. Local surveillance
of employers' cars decreases that danger, in particular when regulations deal with how work
breaks are watched and, if the employee drives the vehicle home on a regular basis, how non-
working hours are tracked.
CONCLUSION

The privacy of employees might be heavily controlled in international businesses, making

surveillance by employees considerably harder to do legal work. For example, the emails contain
employee data and, as such, depending on the location of the employees concerned, are subject
to a variety of international legislation. Therefore it is advised that legal advice be sought before
any staff monitoring is carried out, when communications cross international boundaries.
References
Lebek, B. D. (2013). Investigating the influence of security, privacy, and legal concerns on
employees' intention to use BYOD mobile devices. Proceedings of the nineteenth
Americas conference on information systems, 1-8.