Businesses are resorting to innovations in technology to more closely monitor what their employees are up to.
Enlighted is a company that makes sensors that allow companies to keep track of who is coming and going. They service more than 350 major American companies, including 15% of the Fortune 500. CEO Joe Costello says they are mostly for security and says most people who enter building aren’t even aware they are being monitored.
Some people are wondering if their bosses snooping are an invasion of their privacy. “Generally it’s a fairly common sense approach,” says Human Resource Management specialist Charlie Lewis in a training seminar. “An employer cannot record someone’s private conversation or private activity.”
Companies say they are using technology for safety purposes, and to improve efficiency, and employment law attorney Dan Eaton of California says most are letting their workers know. “The bottom line is an employer does disclose, it gives them much more of a right to review and monitor this kind of behavior than if they don’t,” he says. “And most employers these days do have the kind of policies that put employees on notice that they can be watched.”
Any surveillance of employees, though, must stop at a bathroom door.