In the world of employer and employee relations, an employee privacy policy is a great tool to have in place. Depending on the state where your business resides, your employees may have more rights than in other states. Because this area of law is constantly changing, you can expect to see legal challenges in the workplace. Hopefully, with the right employee privacy policy advice, you shouldn’t have to face these challenges personally.

No matter what type of employee privacy policy you adopt, you should respect your workers. It’s a good idea to adopt a confidentiality policy to protect workers’ personal information at the same time you put the employee privacy policy in place.

As you develop employee privacy policy, you should be very explicit in what the employees can and cannot do. Address how you plan to monitor employees three areas:

1. Clearly explain telephone usage and your right to monitor calls in the employee privacy policy.

2. Delineate computer usage in the employee privacy policy.

3. Inform employees that emails that come through company servers are subject to your inspection as part of the employee privacy policy.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Gather employee privacy policy advice

Get a good general idea of the issues that go along with employee privacy policy. Not every company feels the need to have a strict policy in place, so find a level of security that you're comfortable with. The more employee privacy policy help you get, the better your final policy is going to be.

I recommend: The International Association of Privacy Professionals has a library full of employee privacy policy information you can use to learn more about employee privacy issues. LegalWorkplace.com, the website of the Alexander Hamilton Institute, answers questions about employee privacy policy information in layman's terms.

Hire public policy consultants to handle your firm's employee privacy policy information

This is a growing field of human resources consultancy. More and more businesses, both large and small, are outsourcing privacy policy to consultants who are specialists in the field.

I recommend: Customer Paradigm is a public policy consultancy firm that can handle privacy issues for both your employees and your customers. TriNet is another option for outsourcing your employee privacy policy making.

Purchase a pre-written employee privacy policy

There are a number of websites that publish the forms necessary for you to easily create an employee privacy policy. Most of the websites are expensive, but you can also use many of their other forms that come as part of the package.

I recommend: LawDepot offers automated online forms you can use for your employee privacy policy. These forms are customizable for your state and business. Information Shield offers a number of pre-written forms that you can adapt to your needs as you develop employee privacy policy for your business. Janco Associates offers a number of templates as part of its system, making it easier for you to develop and implement an employee privacy policy formula.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  No matter what employee privacy policy you adopt, be sure to consult with your firm's lawyer to make sure everything is legal in your state. If you have employees located in more than one state, you should make sure your employee privacy policy is compliant in all those states as well.