Employee privacy torts and legal implications

Employee Privacy Torts

History of Employee Privacy

Changing Trends of Employee Privacy

Impact of Innovative Technology on Employee Privacy

Role of Social Media towards Employee Privacy

Impact of Changing Community/Society on Employee Privacy

Adaptation to the new Environment pertaining to Employee Privacy

Employee Monitoring and Surveillance

Laws and Employer Policies for Text Messaging and Social Media

Electronic Communication Privacy Act

Monitoring of Employee Conversations over Telephone & Email

Recommendations for creating Effective Policies

Future Implications of Employee Privacy

As years have passed and the human race has penetrated into the epoch of twenty first century, the technological advancements have conquered almost every facet of human life, especially the workplace. The widespread platform of the internet has become the integral part of a person's life, in the same manner as businesses are employing technological advancements to perform numerous activities like internet infrastructure, maintenance of computers and so on. It means that the human race is residing in a magnificent era where the flow of information is rapid and abundant, hence creating numerous opportunities for businesses to efficiently deal with the changing trends and be competent (Lane, 2003).

On the other hand, the advances of computer age and technology brings the gloomy side to the forefront that that other people now have a greater probability to monitor or record the lives of individuals, as nearly all transactions performed by humans create an electronic trail. This scrutiny has been observed to be increasingly elevating at the workplace as well, due to the reason that workplace has also become comprehensively dependent upon the computer technology to perform the business activities and functions. The monitoring of others' information brings the fact to the forefront that invasion of privacy at the workplace has become one of the grave social issues across the globe, as thousands of employees are confronting it on everyday basis (Lane, 2003).

Before moving ahead, it is imperative to understand of the concept of invasion of privacy. The personal and private information of an employee that include medical records, SSN number, family records and so on, as well as the activities performed at workplace is usually referred to as employee privacy rights. However, the invasion of privacy is typically defined as "one who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of privacy, if the invasion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person" (Doherty, Helms, & Wright, 2005, p. 89). This means that if an individual intentionally access and scrutinize the private information or affairs of other person in an unauthorized way, then he or she violates the law of privacy and performs highly offensive act to the other person (whose private affairs have been intruded) (Doherty, Helms, & Wright, 2005).

With respect to the privacy rights of employees at workplace, this subject matter has become a hot topic of discussion and debate in the recent years. workplace employee privacy issues are based on several types. One of the types of employee's privacy issue in the workplace is related to the personal and private information of the employee and usually arises when this information is collected by the company for employment. While, another type of employee privacy issue is related to the employee's freedom at workplace and generally occurs when their privacy is breached due to the imposition of various rules and regulations by the employer (Lane, 2003).

The changing lifestyle with regard to the innovation in the technology and social media networking have become a significant contributing factor to the increased threat of employee privacy at workplace. Even though privacy issue of employees have been explicitly surfaced in various countries that include United States as well, yet, privacy rights of employees within the country have not been directly expressed in the laws, hence, the authoritative bodies have created a tort for this issue, which is a type of law where the infringed party has the choice to seek compensation (Lane, 2003).

Laws pertaining to privacy rights have also been created and modified considering the seriousness of the issue. However, it is unfortunate to assert that terms and conditions of privacy parameters for the employees exhibit a discrepancy from state to state. In fact, it has also been observed that workers employed in the private sector are leveraged with smaller number of rights in comparison to the employees of the government sector. Nonetheless, these laws are the principal guidelines for both the parties (employees and employers) that privacy rights should be valued and maintained in order to have productive outputs (Lane, 2003).

History of Employee Privacy

Print media was one of the initial technological advancements that boomed in the nineteenth century. However, it was observed by various law professionals that print media is using the technological advances in an inappropriate manner that is invading the privacy to a significant degree. Nevertheless, historical evidences and records have illuminated the fact that the proposal for a tort action in support of the invasion of privacy was put forward in one of the law review article in the decade of 1890 (Nash, 2010).

This classic review article was considerably the first serious discussion on the rights of privacy in the constitution of United States, and was based on a number of patchworks of cases were assembled to support the privacy rights of the people in general. The articles also concluded that interference (regardless of the fact that this intrusion is from government or private sector) to the private information violates the definition of privacy of right and it purely means to leave the individual alone with their sensitive information. Indeed, through their review article, these law professionals (named Louis Brandeis and his law partner Samuel Warren) intended to propose new and effective solutions to the exploitations brought by the print media (Nash, 2010).

This law review article proved to be a key driving force for several states of the country that persuaded them to be acquainted with privacy-based torts for employees at the workplace. This recognition for the right of privacy of the employees was then documented at common law in the form of statute. Moreover, Warren and Brandeis became the key influential people due to which the supreme court of United States expressed the right to privacy. Dramatic escalation of the scope and dimensions of privacy issues was observed as an outcome in the history of American society (Nash, 2010).

The invasion of privacy was an issue that was not broadly talked about, as the evidences undoubtedly elucidates that the theories in support of the issue of invasion of privacy was untouched until the late years of the twentieth century. In fact, it was in the latter years of the twentieth century when the judicial authorities openly expressed the existence of a specific constitutional right of employee privacy at workplace.

However, statute or case laws that were presented in the few decades turned out to be the foundations stones that raised the awareness of privacy-based torts by the jurisdictions. Besides, the arguments presented in the few of the cases became a small step for the legislations and Supreme Court of the country for the development of a more generalized right of privacy that can be applicable to several areas.

Even though significant amount of awareness have been created, yet, widening and broadening of privacy-based torts with respect to the punishment need to be performed in order to daunt irrational surveillance of employees at workplace. As time progressed, more and more cases came to the forefront pertaining to the issue of privacy, which led to the broadening of the concept of employee privacy by the Supreme Court and it is now more than just a protection of employee privacy. As an outcome of such an extension to the concept, the employees are now largely receiving protection by the court and legislation for a variety of dimensions. This indicates that the right to privacy has evidently become a constitutionally accepted doctrine (Michael de Leeuw & Bergstra, 2007).

The historical events and facts have clearly exhibited that until the recent years, employee privacy issues did not came to the forefront. This exhibit that constitutional policy of the right to privacy is relatively new that came to the development, which declare that the employees are now leveraged with the right to privacy within the workplace. The end of twentieth century has bought numerous changes to the privacy rights act, such that the Supreme Court of the United States takes care of various circumstances of constitutional rights to protect the employees from the intrusion of privacy.

It has been noticed that the changing dynamic of the workplace brought conscious to the business environment that employee privacy rights are becoming a grave concern for the employers. Moreover, observations also conclude that advances in telecommunications such as e-mail and the Internet heightened the vulnerability to the employee privacy, as employers have escalated their concentration on monitoring the employee behavior and their information (Michael de Leeuw & Bergstra, 2007).

While the constitutional right to employee privacy at the workplace has extended to cater a variety of circumstances, it at the same time has also far complicated the issue, as the advances of technology have far escalated the vulnerability to acquire more information of the employees. This has also augmented the challenge for employers as the demand for privacy has increased by the employees and court has extended its constitutional doctrine towards the issue.

Changing Trends of Employee Privacy

It is the twenty first century that has transformed the entire globe and its dilemmas and has brought various new issues to the forefront. Employee privacy rights are amongst the issues that has evolved and surfaced with the changing community, changing workplace dynamics and business environment. Besides, various schools of thoughts also claim that this issue of employee privacy has worsened and escalated due to the developments made in the telecommunication mediums such as internet and email. Due to this reason vulnerability of the issue, the management of the organizations is left with no option except monitoring (Turnbull & Canadian Privacy Institute, 2009).

Employee privacy landscape has continued to evolve and advance, which has been exhibited through numerous reports and studies. Generally, these reports have demonstrated same results with respect to the change in privacy issues that monitoring of employee information, behavior and communications has dramatically increased to paramount heights in the recent years. These monitoring of activities, information, and behavior vary from organization to organization (Turnbull & Canadian Privacy Institute, 2009).

As the privacy trends have changed over the years, governance, technology and regulation have become the three megatrends that play a significant role to the privacy protection in the current times. Law regulation bodies globally as well as in United States are putting their maximum efforts to keep the pace with the velocity of change, as the need for stronger privacy protection is becoming the principal object for employees on a broad spectrum (Bergh, 2000).

Unfortunately, it has been noticed that advances in technology is one of the leading sources that situates the legislation and privacy rights issue backward for every step that they are taking towards progression of the issue, as technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, which is very difficult to cope up with (Bergh, 2000).

The last couple of years have been integral to the changing trends that has transformed the lifestyles of the communities and societies where the communication means and modes have completely changed. Due to this reason, privacy related regulations have also evolved with the intention to cater the needs of the changed lifestyles brought forwarded by the technology (Turnbull & Canadian Privacy Institute, 2009).

The change pattern of the people are usually associated with the change in technology, as it makes the lives of the populace much easier and simpler, but at the same time the concerns of people have been observed to complicate. Amongst them, privacy concerns are one of the integral aspects to take into account. Since extensive personal and confidential information of individuals is widely available over the internet, thus, the need of privacy especially at the workplace has also expanded. Three major issues including loss of personal autonomy, lack of consent, and invasion of privacy have come to the limelight as emerging issues resulted from the changing trends of the community (Gangopadhyay, 2002).

The privacy advocates accentuates that due to the inventions of various technological utensils, employees are encountering with the loss of personal autonomy. This is predominantly due to the reason that electronic monitoring and exploitation of employment records are the primary determinants of restrictions that are causing lack of personal freedom, as the employee always have a feeling that all their moves are being monitored. Moreover, employee consent is not given any importance by many of the employers and is monitored without any consultation when personal information is being collected. These three aspects in general have extended with the time, which is immensely affecting the overall productivity of the employee, as expressed by the privacy advocates (Gangopadhyay, 2002).

Impact of Innovative Technology on Employee Privacy

No one can ignore the fact that technology is one of the rapidly changing drivers and its recent innovations like internet has become a necessity of everyday life of not only U.S. citizens, but masses from all over the globe has become reliant on it. This widespread platform is profoundly used not only by inhabitants of the industrialized world, but corporations are also increasingly using this medium for various functions like advertisements of their products, ease of purchasing access and so forth. Indeed, employers are widely using this medium not only as a strong and effective mode of communication but also using it for the virtual transmissions of documents internationally (School of Law - Hofstra University, 2008).

Network application 'Email' was soon created after internet became the essential tool for many people, which became a dominant type of communication in the workplace. However, it is prudent to note that this form of communication has exposed a wide variety of unexpected problems for numerous employers, which ranged from sexual harassment to economic espionage (School of Law - Hofstra University, 2008).

Since the usage of emails by employees in business environment of the American society has become a widespread trait in the today's fast paced world. In addition, email services are typically used an effective medium of communication (in both internal communication as well as external communication with outside clients and stakeholders); hence, employers on a broad spectrum provide this facility to their employees (School of Law - Hofstra University, 2008).

Technology is one of the magnificent platforms that have provided plentiful benefits to enhance and improve the business activities, and has also resolved many of the complex issues, while at the other hand, it has been considered as one of the major originators to several issues that did not existed previously. Therefore, it is negligible to ignore the effectiveness of such a facility; the technological progression has turned out to create collateral problems concerning employee privacy (Nemati, 2010).

Numerous sources of information has also demonstrated the fact that most of the populace of United States believe that the advances in technology have deteriorated the individual privacy at workplace to a great deal. This is due to the reason that their emails and other information over internet are largely being monitored by the employers. While on the other hand, the perception of employers claim that monitoring of employee's email account has become essential in order to curtail the abusive actions. Moreover, it is also believed that monitoring of the email accounts become a discouraging source for the employees to perform such activities (Nemati, 2010).

The overall impact of technology clearly implies that advances in technology are harmful to the employee privacy and creates a negative impact on both mental and physical health, as the employees are exposed to unnecessary stress due to monitoring (Nemati, 2010).

Role of Social Media towards Employee Privacy

Another remarkable invention of internal platform is social medial networking that provides an opportunity to the masses to stay connected to one another online. Indeed, these social media networking sites have become a prevalent and fastest medium for accessing up-to-date information. In addition, social media not only blossomed rapidly in the communication medium, but also became prominent competitor to e-mail and text messaging. This is because the social media sites enable the users to construct a personal profile and form a list of connections where they can communicate over messages, personal pages, file-sharing, and so on (Flynn, 2012).

Due to the increasing popularity of the world of social networking, more and more people began to use it for their personal networking; in fact, businesses on a broad spectrum also started utilizing this dominant network profoundly to advertise their products, access to information, discover new business opportunities and so on. Moreover, due to the elevating popularity of social media sites, corporations on a wide scale are at many instances build internal networking sites to have collaboration with all the employees. At many occasions, it has been observed that the employees have access to their personal networking sites in the workplace during break and normal hours (Flynn, 2012).

Nevertheless, the rapidly rising consumption of social media network by the people on job hours has raised another grave concern for the employers with respect to the privacy implication. This is due to the reason that the rising of this issue resulted in the monitoring of social networking, as one of the recent forms to keep a check and balance on the employees. The monitoring of such social networking sites are prominent reasons of privacy intrusion, as these are characteristically used as a private medium for communication and inappropriate disclosures to these sites result in potential damages to individuals (Flynn, 2012).

One of the principal worries of employers is the outflow of company's confidential data, as social media allows communication and transfer of information in an open environment. While on the other hand, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and various others also acts relates to the breaching of employee privacy as well. This is because if the employer (subordinate or supervisor) is constantly in contact with the employee on social media sites, then it would erode the line between work and personal life. Even though being available for the supervisors indicates the fact that this medium provides flexibility, but at the same time, the privacy of the employee is harmed, as the employee is not able to maintain the secret of his private life (Flynn, 2012).

Another aspect of being available online on social media sites highlights the fact that the link between personal and professional life becomes blurred because the employee is not able to preserve their professional image. Since these sites embrace a lot of personal information of an individual, thus, the employer have a greater chance to explore online communications and other private information of the employee (Baker, Buoni, Fee & Vitale, 2011).

Social media sites not only pose threat to the personal information of the employee, but legal issues are also associated with it. The privacy of employee's content on the work computers is also at greater risk, since this is the primary medium through which they are connected to the social media sites (Baker, Buoni, Fee & Vitale, 2011).

It has been widely noticed that many of the social media sites such as Facebook essentially claim that they have provided adequate options through which an individual can protect their user's information to a sufficient degree. However, such claims of privacy are not assured due to which a blurred line is created between professional and personal life that usually ends up in court case (Baker, Buoni, Fee & Vitale, 2011).

Impact of Changing Community/Society on Employee Privacy

The technological boom in the twenty first century has universally revolutionized the community and society. It apparently demonstrates that the communities have changed their modes of communication from face-to-face interaction to the social media, emails and other online applications. The power of technology is ruling the lives of the masses and has altered the complete lifestyles of general population (Scott, 2008).

Since electronic medium of communication has become the primary source of interaction, thus, people share and broadcast their personal and sensitive information over the web. The increased information available on the web pages simultaneously augments the risk of invasion of private data of individuals, as outsiders (not on friends list) and visitors have greater access to such information. Employers are amongst these visitors who can easily gain access to such confidential information of employees (Cate, 1997).

It apparently highlights the fact that the risk to invasion of employee privacy has only escalated with the changing trends of the community and society. The technology has overshadowed the lives of individual in general and has increased doubts amongst people. Due to this reason, the modern communication systems have also brought up ideas for invasive monitoring by means of telephone and e-mail communications. Indeed, at many enterprises, this obtrusive surveillance is also performed at the workplace through videotape in order to keep an eye on each and every activity of the employee (Scott, 2008).

Since the technology has evolved, the lifestyles and the notion of people's perception have also changed. Privacy advocates believe that these technologies are leading contributors to the violation of human autonomy and personal privacy that largely deprives the quality of working life. Moreover, the advocators also believe that the concept of privacy has been changed to a great extent due to the advances in technology. It clearly means that intrusion to one's privacy has become a widely accepted component, which used to be a matter of query in the past. This trend has merely changed in the name of making the company's security better and enhancing employee productivity (Scott, 2008).

As the world of commerce has shifted to the global platform, competitions amongst businesses have significantly heightened, which was never observed before. This changing trend of competition amongst organizations has largely affected the employee privacy at workplace. This signifies that increasing number of employers in the United States are demonstrating lack of value to the privacy of employees for their sensitive data. Furthermore, this lack of regard is also working against the fact that retention and preservation of personal information about oneself is tremendously important in the contemporary world due to the increasing illicit actions (Scott, 2008).

The community trends have shifted enormously as the world is constantly encountering economics issues over the globe. This has also affected the income rates of thousands of individuals. Nevertheless, technology is one aspect that acts as a relaxing medium for the individuals to cope up their difficulties (both at workplace and home). In this regard, extensive studies have exposed the fact that the electronic monitoring of employee activities at workplace becomes a hindrance to the relaxation aspect and employees comprehensively feel that their employers are intruding their privacy. This non-protection to their privacy rights eventually lead to non-productivity at workplace (Cate, 1997).

Adaptation to the new Environment pertaining to Employee Privacy

The traditional legal and organizational structure has been drastically transformed as the globe has penetrated into the information age. This alteration in the framework has smudge and distorted the clear borders between the personal and work life of an employee. One cannot ignore the fact that the epoch of progressions and telecommunications at one end has created more flexible environment for the employees both at work and home. While at the other end of the spectrum, these advancements and tools have become the prime reason of intrusion of professional life into the personal sphere. As an outcome of it, employers now have a greater probability of intrusion into the private lives of its employees (Maitland & Thomson, 2011).

The above presented aspects have explicated the fact that from the time of liberated newspapers of the nineteenth century to the epoch of internet of the current times, the progressions of technology has only elevated the transgression of employee privacy at workplace. Even though the law does not provide adequate protection to the employee's privacy at workplace, yet, guiding principles have been designed to be followed at both ends that preserve the privacy rights of employees to some extent (Goodman & Hirsch, 2010).

Lawmaking and judicial regulations are encountering challenges to a much greater extent due to the rules and regulations at the workplace that are continuously making an effort to monitor the activities of its employees. However, this rising challenge is seriously being considered and legislative bodies are constantly developing measures to alter and alleviate those workplace policies that cater to non-work-related employee's information and activities (Goodman & Hirsch, 2010).

Technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, which is creating increased challenges and difficulties for the regulators to meet up to the latest technological trends. Due to this reason, the regulators have developed two-pronged effort, as an effective measure to the issue management. Firstly, the regulators with the help of legislation and regulations aim to continue the same practices that can lead to the improvement of privacy protection. Secondly the regulators have converted their role into the strategic advisors and active participants for the organizations in their decision making discussions, as it facilitates the employers in preserving the privacy issues (Maitland & Thomson, 2011).

The penetration of people into the technology age brought up challenges of employee privacy because digital boundaries have expanded to a large scale, where over-sharing of personal information has become the key driving force for privacy limitations. However, organizations are constantly adapting to the new environment but openly understanding the issue and establishing boundaries as an outcome in order to provide the employees with their privacy rights (Maitland & Thomson, 2011).

The legislation and Supreme Court has developed several guidelines and privacy acts with the aim to provide adequate protection to employees at workplace for their private and confidential information. These guidelines and court decisions have been widely accepted by a number of organizations in the United Sates and have embedded these guidelines as a part of their policy structures with the key intention to provide employee privacy rights. However, few of the privacy advocates have expressed their concerns that even though organizations are implementing the court guidelines, yet, the pace of these developments is relatively slow (Goodman & Hirsch, 2010).

Employee Monitoring and Surveillance

Employee monitoring is basically the action of supervising and scrutinizing all the activities performed by the employees at the workplace using the employer property. Employee monitoring and surveillance is considerably one of the effective measures through which employers seek to control and prevent harassment actions and other activities that are considered illicit. Indeed, due to the innovations in the technological world, employee monitoring has come into sight as a necessity (Kizza, 2010).

However, employee monitoring has become a controversial and debatable topic of discussion due to the complexity of the technology. This is typically because the employees believe that the comprehensive monitoring of their activities is purely the invasion of their privacy at the workplace. In response to it, sources have revealed the fact that employers provide reasonable and justifiable reasons to scrutinize various forms of electronic communication mediums such as emails, voice mail, and Internet usage that are widely used by the employees at the workplace (Stanton, 2006).

The employers intend to examine the employees whether they are involved seriously towards their work or are involved in other activities during office hours, thus, employers widely use monitoring as a viable option to ensure the employee's productivity. Moreover, trade secrets protection is another concern due to which they opt for employee monitoring so that they can prevent leakage of company's confidential information. Furthermore, the employers are not supportive towards discrimination or sexual harassment activities since equal rights and opportunity is typically practiced at the workplace, thus, they keep a check and balance on the employees so that workplace harassment can be averted (Stanton, 2006).

In order to avoid any complications of lawsuits by both the parties and at the same time preserving the privacy rights of the employees, concerned authoritative bodies have created laws with respect to employer policies for text messaging and social media. Additionally, Electronic Communication Privacy Act has also been developed that can help the employees in protecting their protection rights (Kizza, 2010).

Laws and Employer Policies for Text Messaging and Social Media

As it has already been discussed social media and text messaging are the two prominent communication mediums, which have extended into the professional life of an individual as well. However, wide ranging studies have brought the fact to the forefront that at present the privacy laws that can allow the employers to access employee's record over text messaging and social media are still unsettled and not well developed (Stewart, 2013).

Indeed, no generalized trend has been formed that can cater the intensity of the issue, due to which this issue is unclear whether it is a legal business practice to monitor text messages and social media communication of employees. As an outcome of such unsettled privacy laws, it has made this issue a controversial topic that is still under much debate (Stewart, 2013).

Even though the common laws and Privacy acts have been designed, but has not been clear whether it applies to text messaging and social media sites or not. Nonetheless, extensive studies have brought the piece of information into the limelight that the laws designed to protect the privacy of employees are not applicable to all states of the country and only a few of them enjoys its benefits. The states to which these laws are applicable apparently announce that employers are not legally allowed to monitor the employee activities over social media or text messaging. The laws would only allow the employers to monitor legally if they feel that the employee activities (such as irresponsible texting, long hours of online positing during work hours, consistent comments and blogs over employer and employment and so on) over these mediums could pose a threat to the company's image or workplace harmony (Muller, 2012).

Since no clear laws have been defined, therefore, organizations benefit from it. Policies are therefore designed by the companies and vary from industry to industry on the factors of company size, culture and the overall productivity of the employees. Therefore, these guidelines are incorporated in the company policy prohibiting the employees with the use of social networking sites. According to these guidelines, they restrict the employee for what is legal and illegal to post on social networking sites regarding the employer. This is due to the reason that the companies are not only concerned about what is posted through these mediums, rather, they are also concerned about the quality time that is spent on such activities (Stewart, 2013).

Since it has been evaluated that the privacy laws with respect to access for social media sites is not present on federal level, therefore, employers generally are taking advantage of this fact and employing monitoring practices in order to scrutinize the employee activities over social networking sites. In this regard, it has also been noticed that the employers at many instances appoint third-party companies especially with the purpose of monitoring online employee activity from the social media sites (Muller, 2012).

As more and more issues are being highlighted with reference to the employee privacy over monitoring of social media and text messaging, the legislation and court have taken this matter with seriousness. The court policies are going in favor of the employees' stating that text messaging and social media are their private and confidential matters even if they are transmitted from the devises allocated by the employers (Stewart, 2013).

Electronic Communication Privacy Act

Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) has been particularly developed to comprehensively protect the privacy rights of employees at workplace. The act was designed, codified and enacted by the legislation of United States in the year 1986 (Paglin, Hobson & Rosenbloom, 1999, p. 123). Records accentuate that this communication privacy act designed for the protection of employees privacy rights have a number of exclusion due to which the effectiveness in the employee protection is constrained (Paglin, Hobson & Rosenbloom, 1999).

Since workplace employees have few expectations from the legislation, thus, this act has been designed to fulfill the legislation of expectancy at the workplace. This act apparently indicates that it would be illegal for employers if they unofficially interfere to the employee's information through oral, wire (telephone) or electronic communication or gain illegal access to the stores information of the employees. As a consequence of it, the employers would be charged for criminal sanctions, fines (compensations) and civil remedies (Paglin, Hobson & Rosenbloom, 1999).

According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the law prohibits and makes the interceptions of electronic communications illegal at the workplace, since the employee privacy is a major issue. The law defines intercept as "the aural or other acquisition of the contents of any wire, electronic, or oral communication through the use of any electronic, mechanical, or other device" (Smith, 2009, p. 78).

This undoubtedly indicates that if an employer is involved in any activity of capturing employees' communication via wire, oral, or electronic medium, this would be considered as a criminal act, and would be liable for penalties. The access to monitor employee activities by means of telephone, or electronic data is relatively restricted by the legislation and court with the purpose to provide increased privacy to employee information at workplace. In addition, the court wanted to impede the unauthorized and unofficial access (on government level) to private electronic communication mediums, due to which they designed this law (Campbell, 2007).

Since Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) has been designed for employee privacy protection, thus, law acts as a foundation stone for the employers when they seek to monitor employee workplace communications. Under the Act, the employer is privileged with very limited access to the amount of employee information that they seek to monitor. Moreover, the privacy act has also suggested that the employer ought to use owned communication equipment that is a part of the business network during the process of employee information monitoring. Besides, this privacy act also incorporated few stipulations so that they can protect the employee privacy rights and restrict the right of entry to the stored communication on electronic mediums (Campbell, 2007).

Monitoring of Employee Conversations over Telephone & Email

Records expose that the extent of intrusion of emails, voice mails, and telephonic conversations by the employers is not clearly stated in the set of laws. However, monitoring of employee conversations over telephone and email is performed in order to prevent unacceptable usage of internet, email and telephone. Sophisticated automated monitoring systems are key software solutions that facilitate the employers in corporate crackdown of improper activities. These sophisticated solutions enable the employers to track down every moment of employee activities, as they are able to record, filter, and classify the information that the employees transmit (Grama, 2010).

Few of the imperative reasons that have come to the forefront by the employers due to which they intend to monitor the employee's information include: (Weckert, 2005)

Preservation of the company's reputation and band image, since employees are the key stakeholders responsible for creating either a positive or negative image of the brand;

Sustain employee productivity, as the employees at many instances are involved in activities and communications that hamper their efficiency towards their tasks and responsibilities;

Preventing and obstruct sexual or other illegal workplace harassment, which is usually practiced via email and message communications;

Preventing disclosure of organizations' secrets and other confidential information that has been observed by means of telephonic conversation or email communication;

Finally, monitoring of employees has become a widespread, reliable and key source of performance evaluation for many of the employers, due to which this activity is performed. Therefore, electronic communication monitoring has become a common element of performance indicator.

The technological advancements provide a great deal of options for monitoring the employee conversations over telephone and emails. This check and balance is performed with and without the consent of employees, due to which they employee privacy is intruded and highlighted as a major issue. According to the statistical records of recent years, it has come to notice that a significant percentage of employers in the United States monitor the employee activities in one form or another. The numbers of such employers who monitor their employee activities are expected to augment in the years coming ahead. Besides, the records also exhibit that employers to a large extent keep their employees unaware of the monitoring practice (Grama, 2010).

Wide ranging studies bring the fact to the surface that monitoring of employee conversations via emails and telephone creates a negative effect on the mental as well as psychical well-being of the workers. According to one of the studies pertaining to the subject matter explicates that physical ailments such as backaches, increased fatigue, extreme anxiety, increased depression, and so on are more subject to those employees whose conversations over email and telephone are being monitored in comparison to the other employees who are not being scrutinized at the workplace (Weckert, 2005).

Few other studies reflected similar results of physical illness amongst such employees. Indeed, the new studies further highlighted that depression, anxiety, fatigue, stress, and anger are few of the common issues being faced by monitored employees. The use of monitoring of employee conversations exhibit the fact that employees immensely believe they are untrustworthy, disloyal, and unproductive in the eyes of the corporation. As adverse consequence of such monitoring, the relationship between the employee and employer is badly affected (Grama, 2010).

At one end legislation of United States permit employees to leverage with their privacy rights at the workplace to a reasonable amount, while on the other hand, legally employers are also permitted with adequate rights to monitor employee communications. It means that work-related phone calls are the communications that the employers have right to monitor, but if the call is determined as personal in nature, it becomes illegal for the employer to record such a conservation (Weckert, 2005).