Legal and Ethical Implications of Employee Location Monitoring

This article summarizes the legal and ethical implications associated with employee location monitoring. It states that few international laws and no American laws directly address this location monitoring. International privacy laws and directives, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the USA Patriot Act and other laws and directives involving Internet and e-mail monitoring provide the pattern for future location monitoring laws. It also states that ethical considerations such as productivity, security, goodwill, privacy, accuracy, and discipline fairness affect future laws. Furthermore, the authors hope that the understanding of existing laws and ethical considerations associated with electronic monitoring can lead to practical and reasonable location monitoring policies. Employer and employee interests must be balanced. Location monitoring policies should include a legitimate business purpose, ensure that employees are notified that they are being monitored, provide for adequate storage and dissemination of monitoring data, and provide for consistent evaluation of monitoring effectiveness.