Privacy

Personnel records: Your guide to ADA and FMLA medical confidentiality

12/02/2008

Both the ADA and the FMLA have strict requirements for how employers must handle employee’s confidential medical information. HR professionals must know these rules to comply with both laws—and to avoid expensive legal liability for failing to do so. Here are the details you need.

What can we do if former employee might have taken info to competitor?

11/07/2008

Q. Recently, an employee left our company to join a competitor. When we took a look at his computer, we found deleted e-mails and files indicating he downloaded some valuable information about our customers. We suspect he transferred it to our competitor. He was an at-will employee and we had no employment agreement with him. Is there anything we can do about this?

When a new employee brings competitor information, are we at risk?

11/06/2008

Q. We just hired a salesperson from a competitor. We warned her not to take proprietary information from her former employer, but she says what is on her personal laptop is her information. Is there any risk for us from that laptop?

Can you legally search a worker’s locked desk?

11/04/2008

Employees may think of “their” desks as their own private domains—safe places to keep their own things literally under lock and key. However, employers do have the right to open that locked drawer. When the desk is in an open area shared with other employees, the employee with the key doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Do we have any recourse when employee badmouths us on Facebook?

10/30/2008

Q. We discovered that an employee has posted false, profane statements about our company and managers on his Facebook page. What can we do? …

How can I make sure proprietary information doesn’t leave when employees do?

10/22/2008

Q. As an employer, what can I do to avoid unauthorized disclosure of sensitive company information when an employee departs?

Don’t fear investigation will mean defamation lawsuit

10/21/2008

When you conduct an internal investigation, other employees involved in the investigation are going to figure out what the allegations are. But you don’t have to worry about a defamation lawsuit following the investigation if you strive to keep the matter confidential …

Schwarzenegger vetoes card-check union voting for farm workers

10/20/2008

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill that would have allowed California farm workers to seek union representation using a card-check system that was opposed by the farming industry. Although the California Assembly and Senate passed the legislation after a summer of wrangling over details, Schwarzenegger spiked the bill …

Confidentiality provision may violate federal labor law

10/20/2008

A temporary employment agency violated federal labor law by including a confidentiality provision in an employment contract, according to a recent NLRB ruling (Northeastern Land Services, Ltd. dba The NLS Group and Jamison John Dupuy, 352 NLRB No. 89, 2008). In the case, the agency fired a worker for violating the confidentiality provision …

Change your computer passwords often: Study casts suspicious eye on departing IT staff

10/17/2008

Exercise extreme caution when terminating employees with knowledge of your IT systems. More than eight in 10 IT security professionals admitted that, if laid off tomorrow, they’d take valuable and sensitive company information with them, according to a new Cyber-Ark Software survey.