Is it legal to watch what your employees are doing online?

Written by: Andrew Lawson

How will you know an employee is

• surfing the net?
• e-mailing friends on your time?
• sending derogatory messages to co-workers?

In a word--surveillance. In other words--invasion of privacy. Snooping.

But, is it legal to snoop on employees?

Surveillance involves the collection, and sometimes storage, of personal information. Federal and provincial statutes protect the personal information that you collect from your customers and your workers. You can snoop but, you have some guidelines to follow.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) considers records of web browsing and electronic mail to be personal information. "Personal information" means information about an identifiable individual under chapter five of PIPEDA.

Be sure you are adhering to privacy laws when collecting personal information:

• Get consent before you collect personal information. Of course, you do not need consent to collect information that is publicly available.

• Inform employees that your are collecting their information. The OPC says, "at a minimum, employers should tell their employees what personal information is being collected, used, and disclosed." Allow them to review stored information.

• Limit the collection and use of information. Do not collect or store information because "we might use it sometime in the future." Only use information for its stated purpose.

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