Privacy

‘Private’ email? Remind your employee that there’s no such thing!

05/13/2011

Make it clear with employees—early and often—that your electronic communications are not their private playground. Legally, it’s your organization’s property and you have the right to monitor every email as you wish.

Monitoring the virtual water cooler: Employees on Facebook and more

05/10/2011

It’s a sure thing: Your employees are using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. That means you need to make conscious decisions about how to address social media issues with your employees. Proactively develop a policy so you don’t get stuck doing damage control—perhaps becoming the latest talk heard ’round the virtual water cooler.

NLRB presses first case involving Twitter posts

05/03/2011

Employees have the right to discuss working conditions, whether face-to-face around the water cooler or in the online world. The National Labor Relations Board seems intent on making sure employers understand that social media posts are protected, too. Hot on the heels of a decision involving Facebook, the NLRB is now tackling Twitter. Tip: Time for you to develop a social media policy.

N.J. Supreme Court decides: Can employees take confidential docs?

04/25/2011

Can an employee who wants to prove discrimination take, copy and disclose company documents? How does that square with the company’s right to protect what it deems to be confidential information? The New Jersey Supreme Court recently offered some guidance on this issue in Quinlan v. Curtiss-Wright.

There’s an app for that: ID theft worries at Disneyland

04/20/2011

Disneyland Resort workers have filed a lawsuit claiming the Walt Disney Co. is violating state law by encoding workers’ identification cards with their Social Security numbers. The workers say they’re worried that the encoded information on their ID cards could be accessed using barcode scanners such as the kind commonly available as smartphone apps.

Hiring employees from competitor

03/14/2011

Q. We are hiring a high-level employee who will come to us from our major competitor. She has no noncompete agreement with her current employer. Is that our only risk?

How to make the leap to electronic HR records

03/01/2011

Many employers are making the leap to “paperless” HR. Digital records are easy to access and cheap to archive. But despite the many benefits of electronic records storage, a host of legal problems could derail even the best-intentioned digital records plan. Here are the issues to consider before you make the transition.

Tell staff you’re monitoring work e-mail so they can’t argue it was confidential

02/23/2011

Employers can read any e-mails sent using company-owned computers or other devices, as long as they inform employees they should have no expectation the communication is confidential. That’s true even of e-mails an employee sends to an attorney to discuss a potential lawsuit against the employer.

Tale of the tape: Beware acting on recorded conversations

02/11/2011

Employers are sometimes tempted to monitor and record employees’ communications and activities. That can backfire. Fact is, there are limits on how employers can monitor employees. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals recently addressed whether an employer may be liable for recording an employee’s private conversation in the workplace.

Should we forbid supervisors from becoming their subordinates’ friend on Facebook?

02/09/2011

Q. A supervisor recently asked if he was allowed to accept a subordinate’s “friend” request on Facebook. How should we advise our supervisors?