Privacy In The Workplace
...fortable by the numerous technologies that improve monitoring. “ One way that employee’s think is harmless is by sending and forwarding emails. Someone does not realize what one email can do to a company. Let’s say a company of about six hundred to seven hundred employee’s send and forward emails from home to work. One virus can affect all the businesses computer’s because they are linked together. This can cause a business to out of business. That would be about six or seven hundred computer’s they would have to restore if possible. Companies should restrict email usage to within the company itself. I know it is harder for bigger companies to do that. Where I work there are about two thousand employee’s. Even though certain sights are restricted, it is hard to monitor all of them. My company is to the point to where if they notice a sight that is accessed you will not be able to access again after that. You can be terminated for going to sights that are not work related. You would be amazed of how fast an email can spread within a company. It is important foran employee to realize what they can do to their company if something happens. One of the main monitoring that employee’s feel the most upset about is telephone monitoring. No one likes their telephone conversations listened to. An employee believes that it is an invasion of privacy. An employer does not though. They look at it as a great learning tool in hoping their clients or customer’s are receiving good customer service. Yes it is also to monitor personal calls too. Personal calls can impact your work time. One way a manage Privacy in The Work Place Marla Hansen Comm/110 Tony DiGaetano r can help an employee is by listening and possibly give tips to help bring up performance. Let’s say there is an unhappy employee for some reason or another. They start saying negative information about the company to the clients. The manager can hear this and try and help the employee, if needed terminate that employee. Customer service is one of the things that can make a business successful or not successful. There are also laws that protect the consumer about giving out information about them to anyone else. In my job, which is a college, if you give information to a person other than the student going to school, unless there is paper documentation that it is requested by the student and you get audited, the school would face a huge fine and the employer could be terminated. Not to mention, the student could file a lawsuit which of course the school would settle out of court because of publication. Sometimes it really is necessary to listen to employee’s and make sure they are staying within the guidelines that the company have to abide by also. No company wants to go to court. It would hurt them financially, there stock could go down and if too bad they would start downsizing and you could be out of a job. Legally an employee’s actions can be monitored. A company has to be careful how they conduct themselves with their employee’s to avoid problems. Attorney’s Amy Delpo and Lisa Guerin are familiar with the many lawsuits regarding employee’s that believe their privacy had been violated. The lawsuits can be a number of things. They fight lawsuits where the employee felt harassed or disrespected. Through the many years of experience working with employer’s and employee’s they have definitely found a trend as to what companies can do to make a successful business. RESPECT is the number one problem in the workplace. They know from experience that employee’s that are disrespected in any way are far more likely to get revenge legally. Believe it or not a jury will side with the employee no matter what they have done but the way the company handled it. Most of the jurors are working people also and will most of the time side with the employee. Lisa believes it is very important to utilize an open door policy within a company. It is a good way to start communication as long as it stays positive. Being consistent on standards on performance is very important. Sated by Amy Delpo “ Every workplace decision made should be guided by job related criteria, not by a worker’s race, or gender and not by the employee’s personal life or your personal biases. Making sure that your personal decisions are business related, make economic sense and it will keep you out of lawsuits for discrimination, violation of privacy and wrongful termination.” The most important thing legally is the company have a employee handbook. This is a great way to set standards as long as the rules aren’t bended for some and not everyone. An Example would be, a company that has many employee’s and many different manager’s, those standards can and most likely will be different per manager. At that time it would be a breach of contract and can be even more severe for the employer. Make sure that as an employer that you need to be discreet. An employee can...