Workplace Privacy — A Team Issue

Ever since Orwell’s classic novel “1984” was published there’s been a growing sense that Big Brother may indeed be watching us. Walking along a city street, driving on a freeway, or even sitting at our desks there’s an increasing chance that someone could be looking at our image on a screen without our knowledge.

Surveillance techniques at work are becoming ever more sophisticated and intrusive. Emails and website visits are monitored, telephone calls are recorded, CCTV cameras are installed in workplaces, and these are just some of the less-sophisticated techniques employed.

Clearly workplace security must be seen as a matter of concern. Crimes like burglary, robbery, vandalism, shoplifting, employee theft, and fraud cost businesses billions of dollars each year. But all employers should be aware of the very genuine concerns about workplace privacy that are also growing as a result.

Assuming that everyone’s guilty until proved innocent is not a justification for excessive surveillance. Employees, most of whom pose no security threat whatsoever, want to be able to go to work and have respect from their employer for their privacy and autonomy.

There has been increasing confusion among employees and employers alike as to what is permitted. In some cases the introduction of over-the-top security systems and procedures have only served to alienate and worry staff.

A study by the US Office of Technology Assessment found workplace monitoring “contributes to stress and stress-related illness”. To avoid a detrimental effect on productivity there needs to be a balance between the employer’s right to protect property and the employee’s rights to privacy.

Compared to the telephone or traditional mail, online communications can allow employees to quietly and unobtrusively do tremendous damage to a company. Good security practices by employers may require them to institute a certain level of monitoring or recording of employee activities.

New technologies make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees’ jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are using the internet.

It’s understandable that employers want to be sure their employees are doing the right thing by them without improper use of company resources, but employees don’t want their every conversation overheard or trip to the toilet logged. That’s the essential conflict of workplace monitoring.

Here are some of the steps you can take to gain cooperation from your team members in the matter of workplace privacy:

· Clearly identify to your team the risks which you need to counter through monitoring – to prevent fraud, harassment or the disclosure of confidential commercial information

· Make certain that monitoring is only used for the purposes you have defined and that information gathered for one purpose is not used for any other

· Monitoring should be clearly targeted; there should be no blanket monitoring or random ‘fishing expeditions’

· Sensitive data about team members such as health-related information must be especially safeguarded from improper monitoring

· Your team should be told in advance of what is allowed and what is off-limits, and in what circumstances monitoring may be carried out

· You should adopt and publish clear and fair policies that are understood by all those affected

It shouldn’t be very hard to agree to sensible guidelines and rules in most workplaces, and if team members have a hand in framing them there’s a much better chance that the intended outcomes will be achieved.

Employers should recognize that such an approach is sensible and will result in a more productive workplace. Excessive monitoring is not always in the interests of business and can produce just the opposite effect.

Note that usually when an employer promotes a policy regarding any issue in the workplace, including privacy issues, that policy becomes legally binding. Policies can be communicated in various ways: through employee handbooks, via memos, and in union contracts.

But legislation will not provide adequate solutions to questions of workplace privacy. Any laws or regulations created for that purpose would needlessly force both employers and employees into privacy practices that satisfy few if any and interfere with almost everybody.

Remember that you are always able to bargain with your team members over their terms of employment, including what privacy expectations they may have. This can and possibly should be an element of every contract of employment.

Better still, develop your firm’s security policies in cooperation with your team so they share ownership of the procedures that are put in place to safeguard your interests and theirs.

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Copyright 2003, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.