Employee Locker search

ronjonhr

Hello, we want to do a locker search to all our employees (retail location in FL).  We have a clear policy that allows for this but just wanted to know if anyone had any experience, feedback or guidance if they did this before?  We provide the locks and discourage personal items being brought in to the store.

Thanks.

IrisD

Our policy states that management may inspect lockers at any time. The employee may be present.  If there is any suspicion of contraband, then we have the employee's supervisor and a member of management present.

 

SubGrapHR

I used to work for a major hotel chain with over 2000 employees at our location.  We suspected a few folks of stealing from guests so we initiated a search of their lockers for this reason.  I would highly suggest that you have the employee present.  We found it to be important as we did not want to remove anything that could have been theirs.  We also found it beneficial to question them on the spot (but in a private location) should we have found anything that was clearly not theirs.  It proved easier as they would often come back with denials, etc.  With them present, good luck denying that you were "set up"  or that it was falsely placed in their locker, etc.  Extra precautions never hurt.

TXHRGuy

[quote user="ronjonhr"]

Hello, we want to do a locker search to all our employees (retail location in FL).  We have a clear policy that allows for this but just wanted to know if anyone had any experience, feedback or guidance if they did this before?  We provide the locks and discourage personal items being brought in to the store.

Thanks.

[/quote]

There are some risks here depending on what you mean by "search".

State law differs on privacy protections and often it is left up to a judge.  Your best odds will be if you have a valid and business related reason for conducting the search.  Safety always plays well here, like a purported eye witness account of a firearm having been visible in a locker, although you may want to call the cops at that point and perhaps monitor the locker and monitor or remove the employee from the general population until they get there.

 One source (nolo) says you should only search if necessary, do what you can to avoid having to search (e.g., check time cards and security cameras and the like depending on what you are looking for), have a policy in place (which lowers expectation of privacy but doesn't guarantee summary judgement), don't search randomly, don't conduct body searches, generally speaking you should never monitor restrooms and changing rooms, consider the employee's perspective on whether or not the space you intend to search is private to them (e.g., do they lock it?), and don't hold the worker against their will (e.g., to keep them away from the search site or to try to soften them up to consent to a search).

I know from past research on the topic that, for example, the locker may be non-private but personal belongings within the locker may be private.  For example, if you open a locker and inside the locker is a purse, you probably cannot rifle through the purse although if there's an easily visible piece of company property or illegal paraphernalia, you can take action on that but I still wouldn't touch anything.  Have a witness, take pictures.

Avoid this as much as possible, have witnesses, document (with photos), and be sure it's even possible in your state and, if so, have a clearn understanding of what the scope and limits of your search under the law.