March 29, 2008
Privacy at Work?
I received this question from a reader recently:
“The head of the company I work for is constantly bringing attention to trust in the workplace— characteristics of it, how teams build trust, etc. However, I happen to know that there is snoopware on the network and that only one other manager knows about it, let alone any of the rest of the staff.
This manager is constantly checking what people are working on, and reporting the “goof-offs” to the boss. I only found out because I probed. This leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, especially since I am the one who does all the in-house training. It seems hypocritical to facilitate “trust building in the teams” within this corporate lack of trust.
I used to run a small company and in the ’90s our legal advisors told us we needed to inform employees about this sort of thing, or we were invading their right to privacy. Have things changed so much since then? Is this typical in today’s corporate climate?”
Good questions.
So, do companies have the right to watch what you do without you knowing?
Legally, I believe they do. However, should companies be watching employees? As my reader pointed out, how does this build trust?
My answer to this is simple.
There are a thousands things to distract us from our work, personal phone calls and the internet being the top two. I agree with my reader, that companies need to trust their employees. I am not talking about blind trust, rather trust, knowing that not everyone will always be prudent with their use of the internet, etc.
As managers, we are not babysitters. If we can’t trust that our employees are doing a good job then we probably do not have the right people for the job.
