Due to the increase in remote jobs, work-from-home employees have increased. Many employers use reliance methods to monitor their employees and their productivity. These tactics have been subjected to legal and ethical questioning as many people are unsure whether it is lawful or not. A wage & hour attorney can help in resolving all the doubts.
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Can your employer monitor your activities?
Monitoring the employees has been impacted for a long period of time. Employers utilize the services of supervisors and other systems to monitor their employees’ productivity. However, with the growth and technology, new methods and technologies are being used to monitor employees’ work.
Earlier surveillance was limited to industries with lower wages. However, nowadays, white-collar employers also include those technologies for recording the activities and productivity of their employees so that their work can be tracked down. These days, doctors, lawyers, and even hospice chaplains are under the surveillance of their employers. The surveillance or monitoring of the employees is done by technologies that record details like usage of the Internet as well as the sites and apps used by the employees during their work hours and their duration.
Along with that, it also records the idle time of employees’ computers, words typed by an employee every hour, emails sent and received from the employee, display off her computer, and photos of the employee through the WebCam. With the growth and technology, a lot of rules regarding professional and personal laws have been questioned. Certain federal and state privacy regulations are being considered right now with the increase in surveillance.
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Legal restrictions
There are generally two apps available for limiting employee monitoring. The electronic communications privacy act of 1986, as well as the common law protections against invasion of privacy. The ECPA is a federal law that helps in the regulation of electronic communication surveillance in the work environment. Its extension can be observed in the federal Wyatt effects, which restricts the Intersection of communications without authorization. He said he has two exceptions: the business purpose exception and the consent exception.
The business purpose exception entitles the employers to monitor their employee and their communication if it is demonstrated that the surveillance has a business-related reason. The consent exception allows employers to employee monitoring with their consent. If the said employee consents to their employer to check their communication regarding business purposes, they are allowed to do so.
