Based on federal discrimination laws, employees have a right to:

At the same time, employees may have subjective expectations of privacy due to passwords, information segregation, or the use of electronic lockboxes, but an employer’s policies may eliminate any objective expectation of privacy, and some technology might simply not be considered private. Because laws related to employee’s privacy expectations have not caught up with the technology available to employers, privacy claims have to be evaluated carefully.

Employee privacy rights include an employee’s activities at work and personal information, but company policy will often dictate those rights. Technology lets employers keep tabs on many aspects of employee workplace activity. Numerous kinds of monitoring are legal, and most employers do monitor their employees’ activities on some level.

Many technologies allow employers to observer their employees’ "digital footprints" and thereby gain insight into employee behavior. Nearly any activity on your office computer can be monitored, almost completely without regulation. The employer may watch, read, and listen to most of the employee's workplace communications.

This webinar will examine the things that employers can and in many cases, should do as well as the areas that may cause conflict with employee expectations.

Areas Covered

Who Should Attend

Any employer will benefit from this webinar but those that are in policy making areas or are responsible for investigations and/or disciplinary action will probably benefit more.

Why Should You Attend

There are really two aspects to the concept of employee privacy rights. At a fundamental level, employees believe that they have a complete and total right to privacy at work. Employers know, however, that there are very few employee privacy rights and the potential conflict that is caused by this dichotomy is bound to create employee relations issues if not more serious legal ones.

At the same time, employers have obligations to protect employee information and their right to privacy. There are a number of laws, in particular the CPRA, that employers must comply with and, in fact, notify their employees of those rights. The trend over the past few decades has been for states and municipalities to pass such legislation and not wait for the federal government to take action.
This means that employers should know what their obligations are, how to ensure that they are, in fact, compliant and how to inform their employees of those obligations.

Topic Background

A person has far fewer privacy rights at work than they do in their personal life but a worker is still entitled to some privacy at their job.

At the same time, an employee's right to privacy in the workplace is a controversial topic. There is an increased reliance on computers and electronic communication to do business, and technology has enabled employers to monitor virtually all workplace communications made by employees using work computers, company internet access, and company e-mail accounts.

While employees may feel that all monitoring is a violation of their privacy rights, much of it is legal. Some employee activities, including private conversations or personal items in restricted spaces, like locked desk drawers, generally receive more privacy protections. Other activities, like recreational drug use, may lead to testing for substance abuse or safety concerns.

This webinar will examine some of the more common privacy issues and provide recommendations for employers.