* Internal privacy is not a corporate right
A few weeks ago, Boeing’s board of directors fired its CEO, Harry Stonecipher. It’s not because the board members weren’t pleased with the results he was getting; Boeing was doing well financially under Stonecipher. No, poor Harry lost his job over a personal matter that was against company policy: he was having a secret affair with another Boeing employee.
If the affair was secret, how did it come to light? Well, Harry unwisely used company e-mail to send explicitly sexual notes to his paramour. An anonymous tipster inside the company sent a letter to company officials informing them of the situation, and a copy of the e-mail was attached as proof. Given that Stonecipher was supposed to be leading the charge to a more “morally proper” company, the board had little choice but to fire him as an example for all other employees.
There’s another lesson here for all corporate employees: e-mail is company property and users of the e-mail system have no right to privacy when it comes to the content of their messages. The employee who uncovered and revealed Stonecipher’s intensely personal note had every right to do so. (I’m assuming, of course, that this person is a network manager and not a hacker.)
Experts on labor issues say that corporate employees have no right to privacy when it comes to communication using company systems, including e-mail, instant messaging, fax machines and telephones. The company is permitted to monitor and inspect any use of these systems at any time. These same experts advise that companies should periodically remind their employees of this policy to head off any confusion over personal use of company property.
Government employees may not have such a strict policy guiding them. Their privacy rights are somewhat protected by the U.S. Constitution and perhaps state constitutions. This doesn’t give government employees the right to abuse the use of communication systems; they simply have more protection from government intrusion on their activities.
Nevertheless, it is good for all business entities to establish a usage policy and make people well aware of it. Of course, you aren’t trying to create a Big Brother atmosphere where employees think you are monitoring everything that they do, but you do want workers to be aware of company vs. individuals’ rights.
The fact of the matter is that companies have broad rights. Specifically, they can monitor:
* The content of all e-mail messages.
* Phone conversations, although some states require that parties of a call are informed that the call may be monitored.
* Usage of a company computer, including idle time, Web sites visited, applications used, and data stored.
* Phone numbers dialed on a company phone.
The use of e-mail for personal communications can be especially ugly. Even if you delete your personal e-mail from your in-box, it can live on for a long time on corporate servers. Under new SEC regulations, many companies are even obligated to store all e-mail communications for years before purging.
Employees of the old Enron learned this lesson the hard way when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was entitled to review and publicly post more than 1.6 million e-mail transmissions of various Enron employees during a fraud probe. Yes, there was a lot of personal and embarrassing information revealed in these e-mails, and anyone could access the FERC database to read the notes.
So the best policy is to discourage personal use of company systems except for emergencies, and to encourage employees to keep all communications professional. You never know who might see what you are doing.
Linda Musthaler is vice president of Currid & Company. You can write to her at mailto:Linda.Musthaler@currid.com
