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Employee Surveillance Video Cameras Watch our Every Move at Work.

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Employee surveillance video equipment is being used with great frequency, not just in large department and convenience stores but by large and small businesses. 

Employers are monitoring employees for various reasons, among them are to oversee productivity, protect employees and to decrease theft in the workplace. 

The issue of concern is when surveillance violates employees’ rights and who makes this determination. 

Civil liberty groups, unions, and attorneys are frequently fighting these battles for privacy rights of employees. 

This type of monitoring is not always disclosed to employees in the work place, even though the majority of businesses do let employees know they have employee surveillance video policies in place for this type of monitoring. 

When it becomes a privacy issue is in areas such as bathrooms and changing rooms, in areas such as health care facilities, use of employee video for publication for commercial use and when divulging employee private matters that are not related to work. 

Companies that do not choose to follow the laws in these areas can look forward to lawsuits and stiff fines when found out. 

Employee surveillance video monitoring in the workplace can only be visual.

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A Legitimate Use

Video and audio monitoring in the workplace is a violation of state and federal law.

Healthcare has some of the most stringent laws protecting patients’ rights to privacy. 

In the same instance, how protected is that information when surveillance cameras monitor employees and pick up on what is happening with patients?

People can see the real need to monitor staff in the health care arena. What is the balance and how should companies protect this balance? 

With no audio, you greatly decrease the likelihood of this violating both employee and patient’s rights. 

Employees have the right to know when employee surveillance video is in use.

Employees should be given written communication throughout the hiring process. Employers should have a release from the employee stating that they know the surveillance videos are being used. 

Employees have a right to have their privacy protected even when at work in areas that are not to be under surveillance.

This includes such places as bathrooms, changing rooms and anywhere there is a disclosure of private information taking place.

It should be done to ensure personal privacy in such matters. No matter what the laws concerning this level of privacy should be upheld for all employers no matter how large or small.

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Big Brother is Real

Without civil liberty groups, unions, and others these rights could and would in a lot of cases be taken away from the employee. 

Has the increase in employee video surveillance decreased the problems employers were having or has it increased their overall liability? Has it found a way to keep employees more honest?

These questions are yet to be answered as we continue on with this type of monitoring going on. It is understandable that employees and people in general feel they are always being watched.

“We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.”

– James Paul Warburg

It is not difficult to imagine a society in which all employees have their faces stored in a database along with their work habits.

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