It’s tempting, eyes glazing over, spending 8-10 hours at your desk in your cubicle, to want to check your personal e-mail one or two times during the day or to research that new restaurant you are thinking of dining out at on Saturday night or even check out pictures of Eliot Spitzer’s call girl.
Beware!
Employers are entitled to monitor employees’ e-mail when they are using their company’s e-mail systems. Employers should warn employees of this fact in writing and address such issues as whether instant messaging may be used as a business tool or should be banned as a personal vice.
Logging on to one’s own Yahoo or Gmail account will not cloak you from your employer’s prying eye. Since you are using your employer’s computer network to do so, he or she is still entitled to monitor the system. Employers may lose their right to monitor their employees’ e-mail if they don’t do so regularly so when they indicate in the personnel manual or otherwise in writing that they have the right to do so, they should state that their failure to monitor e-mail regularly does not constitute a waiver of that right.
Even if e-mailing at work is allowed, you shouldn’t don’t use your employer’s e-mail system to send your resume to a potential employer, to search Craigslist for a night out with Eliot Spitzer’s call girl or to advise a friend that your company is about to be sold, when that information is confidential, and therefore that she should buy its stock.
Finally, your employer can not only review your e-mail but also check out which web sites you’re browsing. There are two other considerations to think about here; what you browse may be considered to be inappropriate objectionable matter to a fellow worker when it appears on your screen and therefore subject you to discipline under your company’s sexual harassment policy, e.g., those tasteful nudes of a Hollywood starlet, and what you browse and download may introduce a virus into your employer’s network, making you a wanted man in the eyes of your employer’s Chief Technology Officer.
