Why is employee privacy a major issue for employers?

Privacy is a complex issue involving almost every aspect of the employment relationship. However, the concept has a simple origin --employees believe that they have a right to have personal or private information kept secret. Employee "rights" can conflict with management's need to know information in order to make legitimate, business-related decisions. In addition to this conflict between employees and management perspectives, innovations and changes in our workplaces bring more challenges, such as:

• Access and security. Computers have made most traditional privacy protections obsolete. For example, personnel information was relatively easy to control when personnel files were physically locked in file cabinets in a locked file room and key access was tightly controlled. Personal information stored in computer files does not offer the same level of protection.
• Scope and sensitivity. More and different types of information on employees --medical records including drug test results; results of psychological or integrity tests; sexual preferences; employment references that may include false information; criminal background checks including arrest records; unsubstantiated allegations made by others or margin notes made on interview forms; notes made by in-house employee assistance program counselors --finds their way into files that are not adequately secured and the information becomes known by individuals who are unaware of the sensitivity and liability of transmitting the information.
• Amount of data. As greater amounts of information are collected and stored, the ability to determine what information should be retained because it has a present or future business purpose becomes increasingly more difficult.
• Growing demand for privacy "rights." Employees believe that private information is just that. Most employees view sensitive information about them or their families as their "personal property" and thus protected as such by the courts. Employees generally perceive that there are constitutional protections in the workplace and demand them for themselves.
• Trend to litigation. Employees reflect broader society in the increase in litigation. Employees in private companies are generally not protected by federal constitutional privacy rights in the workplace with few exceptions; therefore, pursue litigation in local courts. Employers have had to address the potentiality of defamation and slander lawsuits.
• Changes in the traditional employment relationship. There has been a dramatic change in the employment relationship. Companies no longer place the same value on a stable full-time work force and employees no long have the same level of loyalty toward their employer. In this environment of diminishing trust and value, suspicion and fear may grow.
• Legal background. The greatest privacy protections apply to employees of government entities. In the United States, federal and state constitutions were written to protect citizens rights and to narrowly define government powers. Therefore, unless a law specifically includes private employers, there are no "automatic" rights given to employees of private employers as a result of "constitutional" protections.

However, managers should consider voluntarily adopting some of the protections provided to public employees because it makes good business sense to do so. In addition, prohibitions in federal law, such as control of medical records and prohibitions on polygraph use, that apply to private employers.