Essay on Employee Privacy In the Workplace

Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.

If you're using your computer at work, and your company has a stated policy regarding monitoring your use (perhaps even absent that policy, depending on how you read the case law), then you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in anything that you do online using your work computer, whether that's during your work day, after hours, or while traveling. Your company can legitimately "eavesdrop" on anything you do with their equipment, and there's little you can do about it.

The Company’s pledge to provide a safe and healthy work environment bans smoking on Company properties, including but not limited to break areas, bathrooms, and work areas. Employees who smoke will be able to do so only on break and lunch times. They will have to go outside of the Company’s facility in the designated smoking areas on the property.

This view is upheld in many courts. One such case is the McLoren v. Microsoft, and Smyth v. Pillsbury. Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, explain, in the case of McLoren v. Microsoft, McLoren was part of a harassment investigation, and Microsoft broke into McLoren’s password protected personal e-mail folder to gather evidence. McLoren claimed, the password protected folder was like a personal locker, for personal items. The court rejected the argument, stating the e-mail was first received in the inbox of the e-mail provided by Microsoft and moving it to a personal folder is no exception (Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, 2006). In Smyth v. Pillsbury Company, Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, explain, Smyth sent unprofessional comments in an e-mail, from home to his supervisor. Pillsbury fired Smyth. The courts upheld this action, because the e-mail was retrieved from storage at the company owned servers (Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, 2006). With these examples of employees misusing company communication equipment, employers must monitor employees to avoid legal liability.

Selected Answer: fails to protect employees in most situations involving e-mail monitoring by public and private employers.

Employers do have the right to monitor what an employee is doing on the web to make sure the employee is being productive. The monitoring process can help employers and the whole company from theft or other harm begin released by employees. If employees believe that they

This section of the employee handbook is provided as a guideline for employees to understand the company policy and procedures regarding privacy in the workplace. While this section cannot address every possible scenario that may occur, the general policy will serve as a basis of understanding the key workplace issues and employee privacy. This section addresses privacy issues related to personal background information, off-work activities, and the corporate policy on the use of electronic monitoring. These privacy policies are designed to both provide a clear guideline for employees on the difference between job related and personal privacy. The policies are designed to create a standard set of

The most common form of an invasion, to employee privacy rights is email. With the massive use of computers, email has become the biggest communication tool of choice in the workplace. The concern of employers has grown tremendously with the use of email in the workplace. Employers' concern is that, employees can waste time by sending and receiving email for personal use, and they may provide easy access for hackers to entry their computer system. Employers can monitor an employee computer activity to ensure productivity in the workplace. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (2006) states, "Unfortunately, if an employee uses a company computer for email use, the employee employer has the right to review the contents of his or her email."

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse went over computer and workstation monitoring, email monitoring, telephone monitoring, mobile device monitoring, audio and video monitoring, GPS tracking, postal mail and social media monitoring. Employers are able to see what is on your screen, how much time you spend away from your computer and how many keystrokes per hour each employer does. Employers are able to discretely monitor employees with certain computer equipment. Employees may not know they are being monitored. Employers can review email content. Even though the message may have an option for marking an email as private, the company may still have access to the email. You should assume that your work emails are not private. Even though you may delete your emails, the company still has access to them also.

The idea of employee rights involves many complex issues. An employee’s right to a workplace free of discrimination and harmful environmental factors is obvious. Yet, other issues surrounding privacy, personal expression, and communication monitoring are not

Smokers face many challenges in the modern world, and one of the biggest happens in the workplace. Many large – and small – employers have taken a strict zero-tolerance approach to smoking in the workplace, and that can literally leave smokers with no place to

E-mail has rapidly become a staple of the modern office. Currently, two-thirds of employees in medium and large companies in the United States now have Internet access, compared with fifteen percent only two years ago. The availability of e-mail allows for messages to be widely and rapidly distributed, improving efficiency and reducing cost. In addition to being one of the components of the new workplace, e-mail is also the center of a hot privacy debate. Part of this is because, unlike regular mail, which is difficult to monitor, e-mail can be scanned with ease, allowing employers to engage in monitoring at an unprecedented rate, and raising the specter of a workplace free of privacy. As this relatively new technology gains ever increasing prevalence, certain questions

There are many problems with the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, including issues with the workplace. The United State Constitution and its corresponding Fourth Amendment privacy protection provide little guidance in email monitoring situations. At the very least,

Nicotine is highly addictive, which is one of the reasons why it is so dangerous. The nicotine withdrawals a person might go through can be one of the biggest reasons they cannot/will not quit. Smokers may know the dangers it causes, but have too much difficulty quitting and it is no longer an option for them. They may decide to continue smoking, accepting the risks simply because of the psychological and physical traumas quitting takes them through. One of the employees fired by Weyco in Michigan due to its ban on smoking, Cara Stiffler, spoke out about the policy. She strongly disagrees with the ban and she believes that quitting smoking is a fight about personal liberty. She says “I want to quit, but I want it to be on my terms, not someone forcing me to make that

The law supports the claim that employees have a right to access employees’ emails, although most employees are of the opinion that their employers should not access their emails. The courts have not found any reasonable expectation for the employees to have privacy in the same and therefore, they have always granted permission to the employers to keep an eye on the employees’ activities as well as reviewing it. In a case of Smith v. Pillsbury Co., the plaintiff had sued the employer on the ground that he had wrongfully discharged him after the employer intercepted an email message he considered inappropriate (Jennings, 2005). Smith being an at-will kind of employee, his suit centered on whether by being discharged, it went against Pennsylvania’s public policy thereby falling into the exemption under the general rule which indicate that employees who are employed on the at-will basis can have their employment terminated any time. The defendant was given motion from dismissal of the case since it failed to state a claim. The employer was therefore found not guilty of either invading the employees’ privacy or violating public policy when he terminated smith (Wolkinson & Block, 1996). The employer had created email communication system but had told the employees that it was privileged and confidential. The employer also informed the workforce that their emails would not be intercepted