right-- this is made clear by a companies terms of use police. Years ago when the lines between work and personal life were clear this was very simple to do. Today that line is blurred as many work form home or travel work and take advantage of technological advances (laptops, email, and internet enabled mobile phones). Given these advances and a recession, employees are working harder and longer hours with many battling to maintain a work life balance. The result of which often has employees attempting to save time by utilizing company equipment to address personal matters via a phones voice, text, and email capabilities.In this day in age it is pretty well known that company email should be used for business use, as it is not 'private'. While this is known,
79% of employees admit to utilizing work email for personal use. “Employers have both a right and a responsibility to ensure that e-mail is used for the good of the organization and is not used in an unlawful or damaging way,” says Mark Levitt, a retired attorney and vice president of collaborative computing and the enterprise workplace at IDC, the research firm in Framingham, Mass. To address the issue many companies monitor employees emails - please refer to the figure to the figure to the left for stats.When it comes to the debate over privacy, Levitt says an employer's
owns the e-mail systems -- which includes the software, network access, computers, and so forth. Therefore, the company has the legal right to oversee how its systems are being used or abused. In one sense, e-mail monitoring is a way to protect the organization’s confidential business information. “Employers need to know if employees are sending e-mails to competitors containing confidential information about product designs or strategies,” says Levitt.
at does this mean for their own privacy? In a world where work life and personal life are in a state of imbalance, it is my belief that is best to keep it separate. Deloitte Consulting for example allows employees to pay for personal use of company iPhones. In a recent study 45% of business iPhone users use it over 3/4 of the time for personal use. While the iPhone is marketed and utilized more as a social device than the blackberry for instance, the poll reinforces the personal use of business devices. Regardless, labor experts say personal information on a company device is subject to monitoring Yet for those who opt in to the cost saving measure to avoid looking like a drug dealer, the debate over their personal privacy is more complicated as seen in the case below.
"The future of employee privacy rights in the workplace may hinge on a case that the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up involving a cop and sexting. Jeff Quon, a California SWAT sergeant, was given a pager from his employer, the Ontario Police Department. He was later found to have used the device not only for work but also for pleasure, often sending sexually explicit text messages to his wife and his mistress.
Quon’s employer found out about his personal use of the pager after an investigation looking into excessive texting at the department.
uon cried foul, saying he thought the messages were confidential.
As a result, Quon; his wife Jerilyn, who is also a police officer; his mistress, April Florio, who is a department dispatcher; and another sergeant, Steve Trujillo; sued the department, the city of Ontario, and the paging service company, Arch Wireless Operating 
A lower court decided in the employees’ favor in 2008; the defendants appealed. Now the highest court in the land has decided to hear the case, and privacy advocates and labor law experts are waiting to see how the court will decide.
“This could be a game changer when it comes to monitoring by employers and electronic privacy for employees,” said Nancy Flynn, executive director for The ePolicy Institute and author of “The e-Policy Handbook.”"
this last bit below is brought to you by Eve Tahmincioglu, msnbc.com contributor.
I hope that the supreme court rules in favor of this Jeff Quon character. If a company is requiring you to carry around their phone, than what you do on that phone should not be the employers business. These companies are trying to invade everyone's privacy. If they give you the phone, that they should have some level of trust that you are using that phone for the right reasons.
ReplyDeleteIf the supream court doesn't rule in favor of this Quon guy, than i think this would give companies the ability to wire tap their mobile devices. That is just to much. Any business that has the time to sit their and monitor their employees phone, is simply foolish.
If that employee is meeting evaluation criteria and is performing well on their job, than who cares how much sexting they are doing.
Companies need to but out!
I completely agree with you Richard. If you are an employer and require your employees to carry a mobil device or pager it is not reasonable for them to carry a "personal" one as well. That would require two different phone numbers and virtual addresses, when you should just be able to contact one person at one "address". If employees are paying to use the work phone also for personal use then in a way it becomes their private property and are entitled to privacy. Because like richard said, where is the fine line between monitoring and just plain wire tapping? If you are an employee doing your job in an efficient, timely manner and are not allowing personal "issues" to influence your work habits in a negative way then there should be no reason to monitor phone calls or text messages. At the same time should a criminal case become involved it is nice to be able to trace texts and calls, yet again that is teetering on privacy issues.
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