Many businesses monitor their employees in one way or another. Employee monitoring can be anything from listening to phone calls, to reading emails and video surveillance. Reasons for monitoring include quality control, productivity assessment and theft prevention. However, an employer’s need for monitoring must be balanced with employees’ need for privacy. To determine when employee monitoring is acceptable, employment law attorneys in Northampton, MA, will consider these factors:
• The employer wants to keep employees from stealing merchandise. In that case, it would be acceptable to set up video surveillance equipment in display areas and warehouses. However, the employer should not use such equipment in bathrooms, changing rooms and break areas, or in other places where employees can reasonably expect privacy.
• The employer wants to monitor phone calls for quality control purposes. Business phone calls can be monitored for business purposes, but once the employer learns of a call’s personal nature the monitoring has to stop. Employers can prevent liability by designating a certain phone for personal calls, and the remaining phones solely for business use.
• The company wishes to monitor emails to stop or prevent discrimination. Several companies have faced discrimination suits over materials transmitted through email. It can occur when chain emails are sent to individuals or groups, and it can also happen when emails from person to person contain discriminatory statements. Employees believe that their emails are private, but they can legally be monitored. To be safe, the employer should tell employees of email monitoring practices.
To protect against liability, it is a wise decision for companies to form a solid employee monitoring policy, and to ensure that all employees are aware of such a policy. If a worker files a lawsuit for privacy invasion, the company’s best defense would be to demonstrate that the worker had no reasonable privacy expectation. By creating a policy that definitively tells when, how and where employees are monitored, employers can provide evidence that employees have no expectation of privacy in certain areas. For help with policy evaluation, companies should visit us website to hire experienced employment law attorneys in Northampton, MA.
