Employee Privacy Balancing Employee Privacy

Employee Privacy

Balancing Employee Privacy with Efficiency Oversight

What are the e-mail use, Internet use, and privacy policies at your job?

I work for a small, locally controlled organization. As a result, very little monitoring or oversight of online activity is conducted. The organization does not possess the resources to prioritize email monitoring or monitoring of the use of certain websites. This is often a point of distinction between those companies that do monitor employee internet use and those that do not. The scale of the organization and the degree to which this scale promotes a culture of micromanagement will both be significant determinants where employee privacy policy is concerned. For companies with multi-site corporate structure and a tendency toward high levels of hierarchical oversight and intervention, it is often the case that email monitoring systems will be put into place that are triggered by the use of certain words or phrases in employee emails.

Howevever, in a small organization such are ours, the privacy policy is less pronounced. This is because a far more direct and intimate relationship persists here between ownership, management and personnel, all of whom interact closely with one another on a day-to-day basis. This familiarity tends to promote the mutual respect required to maintain a sensible level of implicit privacy and also denotes that few broad organizational interests are met through an intrusion of privacy.

What are the current laws regulating employee e-mail and Internet privacy?

As noted though, this is a matter of interest and priority rather than official policy. For many larger organizations, internet privacy receives lesser emphasis than such organizational priorities as employee oversight and efficiency control. This approach is supported by prevailing legal considerations. As noted by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) (2009), "if an electronic mail (e-mail) system is used at a company, the employer owns it and is allowed to review its contents. Messages sent within the company as well as those that are sent from your terminal to another company or from another company to you can be subject to monitoring by your employer. This includes web-based email accounts such as Yahoo and Hotmail as well as instant messages." (PRC, 1)

The same is true of one's web navigation, which may not only be monitored but may also be restricted through administrative control. Many companies that do take an interest in employee efficiency through web-use restriction but who wish to reserve some level of employee privacy will simply restrict those sites which can be visited. This will prevent visitation to illicit websites such as pornographic and gambling websites; prevent usage of ecommerce sites such as Amazon or Ebay; or to prevent the use of general recreational or social sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Other companies may elect, with all legal protection, to prevent any web navigation beyond those sites which are essential to conducting business.

Why do companies implement e-mail and Internet use policies?

Most companies determine to use such monitoring policies based on the calculated view that the loss of privacy will promote greater workplace efficiency by discouraging inappropriate use of company resources and time. Among the reasons supplied for using email and web-use monitoring, the text by iBrief (2001) offers the needs to preserve the company's professional reputation, the maintenance of employee productivity, preventing sexual harassment or cyberstalking, preventing defamation, preventing illegal company disclosure and preventing copyright infringement. (iBrief, 1)

What assumptions might employees make about their privacy at work? How do these policies affect employee privacy at work?

Ultimately, all personnel should recognize that membership in a professional organization surrenders one certain privacy rights. Employers are entitled to take certain steps to protect the use of their resources and time. Further, personnel are generally not considered as having electronic privacy rights where legal workplace realities are concerned. According to the iBrief source, "this inadequacy in the law is primarily based on the fact that many employees do not know the extent of their privacy rights regarding their company-provided e-mail accounts. In fact, many employees operate under the false assumption that personal e-mail messages sent from work are protected from their employer's scrutiny." (iBrief, 1)