Employee Monitoring

Magestry · February 2002

We are located in Florida, I have an office manager that prints out at least on a weekly basis a phone listing for all the extensions in our 2 Florida facility. She looks through all of the reports and looks for phone numbers she does not recognize. If she does not recognize it she call them to find out whom the phone number belongs to in order to determine if that employee was on a personal phone call. This is in order for her to assist the other managers or supervisor monitor how much time each employee spends on personal phone calls. Is this lega? What implications can come of this?

Craig · February 2002

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 02-27-02 AT 10:33AM (CST)[/font][p]I don't know FL law, but generally it's legal to monitor how employees use company property on company time. Does she check every single call, or just the ones over a certain amount of time? Seems like a waste of time unless management suspects a problem with a particular individual. Make sure she applies the same standards to everyone and you should be okay, especially if you have communicated a policy that communications equipment is company property and employees may be monitored.

Phil Dickinson · March 2002

Employers may restrict personal calls on company time. Federal and state law require the consent of one party to monitor personal calls (some states require the consent of both parties). However, an effective company policy on personal calls may help establish that consent. Most of the litigation has involved actually taping or listening to the calls, and the general principle of relevant court decisions is that management may listen up to the point that it determines a call is personal, but may not listen further to the contents of a personal call.

Calling the other party to determine whether a call is personal raises the same issues. By doing so, the employer may learn the name of the employee's contact, that the employee has contacted a certain doctor or health facility, union representative, etc. However, the expectation of privacy has diminished if there is clear communication of a policy of what management will do. Calling on the sly is more problematic. Of course, once the outside party is contacted, management could get itself in trouble by seeking more personal-type information. Also, sharing information with those who have no need to know can provide separate grounds for an invasion of privacy.

For more on monitoring calls, check my pamphlet published by M.Lee Smith at: [url]http://www.hrhero.com/special.shtml#privacy[/url]

Gillian · March 2002

An extreme case of managing to the exception. Of course personal phone calls are made - working life today is different and people have to juggle life at work and life outside of work. The problem is the exception, the person who takes advantage and that person is the one who should be monitored. Further, this kind of monitoring of employees may send the message to employees that they are working in an onerous workplace, especially if this person does this sort of thing in other areas as well - not helpful for productivity and increases turnover.

Rob S · March 2002

I work at a company that does quite a bit of sales/work that is done over the phone, and we have sometimes been concerned that a person was spending a lot of time making long distance calls on our system. We have never actually called a number to see who it belongs to, but we have gone as far a using a reverse directory on the internet. You can type in a phone number, and it will tell you the name that phone number belongs to. This way is free, and the person would not hear from the friend that you called and you are checking up on them.

Rob S.

Magestry · March 2002

Tell me a little more about reverse directory please. Is this something your computer system or phone system is set up to do?

Employee Monitoring

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