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No right to privacy: Employers are watching you

 
Published July 25, 2014

If it seems like employers don't trust employees — well, they don't. Bad apples in the workplace bunch — or simply fear of bad apples — have pushed many employers to use an array of employee tracking devices.

GPS equipment on vehicles tells where on the route people are at any given moment. Computer software tracks every website visited, and blocks some of them. Video cameras watch comings and goings. Supervisors listen in on customer phone calls.

The workplace today is something of a Big Brother world. Workers shouldn't assume a right to privacy. On company computers, phones or vehicles, there is no right to do what you want when you want.

And that makes perfect sense, says Ivory Thompson, operations manager of Retina-X, the parent company of MobileSpy. Aptly named, that. It's a software brand used by employers to monitor employees' online activity.

"Employers want to make sure their employees are doing what they're supposed to do, that they're not giving away trade secrets," Thompson said in an interview. "It's also for productivity purposes."

No surprise there. With staffing cut to the bones in many organizations, employers want to make sure that everyone on payroll pulls the intended weight.

Product vendors like Thompson, human resource experts and employment law attorneys all recommend that employees be clearly informed about whatever monitoring is used.

"Employees should sign off on it when they're hired," Thompson said, and employee manuals should explain the monitoring and use policies.