California Laws on Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring
As an employer, no matter how much you want to monitor your employees, you need to understand their rights according to California Laws to avoid litigation. While these rights are long and complex, they have been summarized below.
Video Monitoring
You are allowed to install surveillance cameras in several locations in your office premises but you must notify your employees of where the cameras are. It is believed that you should install them only in areas where work is being performed and not in areas like the restrooms or the dining room. And if you need the footage of any of your employees for anything, you must seek his or her express consent before going ahead with whatever you want to do.
It is advisable to get a written and signed consent as a disgruntled employee may deny giving you his consent later and even sue you for the violation of his privacy rights.
Usernames and Passwords
You don’t have the right to ask your employee for his username or password to access his workstation. Even if your IT team needs to work on an employee’s workstation, they can access it through the administrator’s password. When your employee is logging on, you need to step away from him, otherwise you may be accused of looking over his shoulder to get his login details.
Phone Calls
When any official phone call is being monitored, you must alert both parties that the call is being monitored. It is also important to remember that monitoring and recording are two different things. A lot of employers believe that notifying employees that their calls are monitored suffices for notification for call recording. This is wrong. Monitoring may mean that someone else is listening. If the calls will be recorded, you must also state that too.
GPS Tracking
This is a pretty new one and its limit is yet to be fully defined. However, employers only have the right to track company’s properties like cars and laptops. This is accepted for the safety of the properties. You should never track any employee that is not in possession of any company’s property. It means you are already encroaching on the employee’s privacy rights.
Drug Testing
You may subject your employees to drug test before hiring them and you can also subject them to post-employment drug test when any issue that warrants it occurs. Aside the two scenarios, you should never subject your employees to drug test. In addition, if drug test is part of your screening process, you must notify applicants beforehand.
Workstation Monitoring
Although there are several applications that can be used to monitor your employees’ activities on their workstation, you must let them know. Never assume that they will never know. They may find out. A glitch may occur and expose you. Don’t risk litigation.
Conclusively, this article has outlined and simplified the most important clauses in California laws on workplace privacy and employee monitoring. Adhering to them is not an option but a necessity.
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