PRIVACY POLICY

Employee Privacy Policy

Employee Privacy Policy

The e-mail use, Internet use, and privacy policies at your job

The email policy at my job at the Florida Foundation for Families (hereinafter “FFF”) are that work email is strictly to be used for work purposes and not for personal use. The policy is covered in our Employee Handbook, and states that the rationale for the policy is that we should only be working during work time, and that if we were to use work email for private use, it could expose the company to internet threats that would otherwise be easily avoidable. For instance, if we were to use email for private use and were to open an attachment that contained a virus, we could potentially jeopardize the entire system's network. During our break periods and lunch we are allowed to use private email accounts, but we are likewise instructed not to open any attachments on our work computers in order to avoid the same threat that would be posed by using our private email accounts for such purposes.

Like our email policy, the internet is supposed to only be used for work purposes as well, however, since work purposes aren't strictly defined there is definitely more leeway in how we can use the internet, since we could be looking at an article in an online magazine or newspaper that's work related (Lichtash, 2004). We are still forbidden from using any networking sites, like facebook and my space, since we would be using the internet for non-work purposes. Fortunately, however, like the email policy, we are also allowed to use the internet for personal use during break and lunch periods, but we are strictly forbidden from accessing any obscene or offensive material.

This policy is strictly enforced since our organization caters to the development of good families, and it would hurt the organization's image if a family member saw anything obscene on someone's computer. We are also told in the Employee Handbook that we have no expectation of privacy whatsoever in our work emails and whatever information may be on our work computers. FFF states that this is due to the fact that the computers are FFF's property, not ours, and since they are supposed to be used primarily for work purposes (except during breaks and lunch), we should keep anything private we want to do with computers to our computers at home.

The current laws regulating employee e-mail and Internet privacy

Currently, there is no Florida law that protects an employee from having their work email and work computer accessed by management, so there is no right to privacy that extends to work (Gilbert, 2005). In large part, this is based on the fact that an employee has a diminished expectation of privacy in his or her work email and internet usage, since in exchange for being employed by the company; the employee is sacrificing that expectation of privacy. This policy is consistent with an employer's ability to drug test an employee, since again the employee ...