- Dealing with Cell Phones, Email and the Internet in the Workplace.
By C. Wayne Hippo, Jr. Esquire
Computers, whether through email or the internet, as well as cell phones and other technological breakthroughs have revolutionized the way many of us do business. Many tasks are far easier and more efficient than they were even just ten years ago. Our employees now enjoy laptops, PDA and cell phones that seem to have more and more features with each passing day. The power of these devices has made our lives easier, and, it may be argued, has made the need to have a physical office almost obsolete. In short, your employees are basically able to take your office and all of its information with them when they walk out the door each day.
The benefits of the electronic age also bring new and often unexpected risks to business owners. These include:
- Disclosure of confidential company and employee information.
- Employees importing pornography into the workplace.
- Employees disseminating pornography to others (often by forwarded email).
- Decreased employee productivity due to personal internet and cell phone usage.
- Increased likelihood of trademark or copyright infringement.
- Privacy issues with employee monitoring
as well as numerous other issues.
You can increase employee productivity and reduce the chances of facing a lawsuit by updating your old employment policies, or even creating new ones, to address your company’s use of electronic technology in workplace.
All employers should strongly consider implementing policies covering email, internet usage, electronic security, cell phone usage and employee monitoring.
Well written email, or “electronic communication” policies will address issues such as appropriate levels of professionalism and decorum, prohibit disclosure of confidential information and trade secrets. Email policies should also address a no tolerance stance on pornography and harassment. Keep in mind; many employee email addresses contain your company name. Do you want your company name on a piece of email that is disseminating pornography and which can be forwarded throughout the world within a matter of minutes? Your policy should also implement procedures to minimize the chances of your company’s computer systems being corrupted by computer viruses.
As for internet usage, you company policy needs to prohibit the viewing, downloading, storage and dissemination of pornography. The policy also needs to educate employees about their responsibilities toward copy written material they encounter on the internet. Your confidentiality and trade secrets policies need to reviewed and often modified to include electronic communications. Lastly, personal use issues need to be addressed in order to improve employee productivity.
Cell phones also need to be addressed in company policies in order to better protect employers in the electronic society. Remember an employer can be liable for the negligence of an employee engaged in the furtherance of the employee’s duties. So if your employee is driving while distracted on a cell phone and is involved in an accident, both the employee and your company could be held legally responsible. Your cell phone policy should prohibit or greatly restrict personal calls on cell phones. Such policies not only save money and increase efficiency, they also help eliminate discourteous cell phone behavior by employees in front of customers or vendors.
Lastly, you need to consider what level of monitoring your company wishes to undertake with respect to all of these electronic communications. Monitoring can, and often should be done in order to address quality control issues as well as to prevent harassment, discrimination, defamation and copyright infringement. While the law clearly allows employers a lot of room to monitor employees in the workplace in order to achieve a legitimate business purpose, there are boundaries that need to be honored and policies need to clearly define what type of monitoring will take place.
At Hippo & Fleming Law Offices, we would be happy to meet with you and review your policies in order to make certain that you are addressing these areas and protecting your business in this electronic age.
