#EmployeeRelations #HRChallenges #WorkplaceEthics
Hey everyone! 👋
Let’s dive into a bit of a sticky situation I’m currently facing in my HR role. Part of my job involves conducting employee relations investigations, like many of us in this field. Recently, I’ve been dealing with a particularly challenging employee who seems to have a myriad of issues—think discipline problems, ADA requests, and even retaliation claims. It’s been a real rollercoaster! 🎢
Here’s where things get a little bizarre: my supervisor asked me to drive to this employee’s house and monitor their activity while they’re working from home. 😳 I can’t help but feel uneasy about this. I mean, I’ve been in HR for a decade, and I’ve never been asked to do something like this before! It raises a ton of ethical and legal red flags in my mind.
Here are a few pain points that got me thinking:
- Ethical Considerations: Is it right to monitor an employee in this way? It feels like invading their privacy. 👀
- Legal Implications: What are the legal ramifications of this type of surveillance? I might be crossing a line here. ⚖️
- Trust Issues: This lack of trust can create a toxic work environment. Monitoring someone from your car can seriously damage employee morale. 😟
So, I’m left wondering—am I being overly paranoid about this, or is it just a practice that I’ve miraculously avoided my entire career? 🤔
Possible Solutions:
- Open Discussion: Instead of covertly monitoring, why not have a frank discussion with the employee about their productivity while working from home? 🙌
- Set Clear Expectations: Establish guidelines and expectations for remote work rather than resorting to surveillance. 💻
- Consult Legal: It might be worthwhile to consult with the legal department before taking any action. 📞
Now, I’d love to hear from you all! Have you ever faced a similar situation? How did you handle it? What do you think about the ethics of employee monitoring? 🤝
Let’s share our experiences and tips! Your insights are invaluable! ✨
>I immediately had a weird feeling about this, and started questioning the ethical and legal implications of doing something like this.
Trust your gut on this one.
You wrote N/A for your location, but that might matter. Where are you?
That is completely not normal and frankly, a little disturbing .
Let’s workers comp investigate injuries. Is work from home an accommodation?
Umm no way
Hell no. Not a normal practice and an unreasonable ask. I’d want to understand his/her perspective but there is no way you should do this. If it was needed, it should be contracted out and most importantly, vetted by your legal team. There is a significant risk of the associate sueing either you or the company or both if caught conducting surveillance. I’d even consider reporting this to your managers manager.
Do not drive to someone’s house if your manager tells you to spy on them.
That is wild and insane that your supervisor mentioned that.
I had a colleague who would do something similar when evaluating ADA claims….he would pull up Google street view and see that x person who said they aren’t able to drive due to disability has multiple cars in the driveway. I ended up reporting him when I quit because wtf are you thinking? Luckily in the moment I was able to tell him that’s not a valid way to evaluate a claim and it didn’t negatively impact the employee but jeez!! He was 2x more experienced than me with a JD.
Hell no.
Can you just not track email activity ?? This seems very weird
If this is the manager’s only tool to determine whether the employee is working, than the manager should probably be fired.
There are few things that would get me to openly laugh in my managers face but that’s one of them.
Also you’d probably get the cops called on you almost immediately. People get creeped out by random strangers just chilling in their cars.
Yes. It’s unethical in my opinion.
There are so many reasons that could go bad for you, your boss, and the company.
There are so many ways to better monitor the situation.
What are the productivity measures in place? What are the tasks the employee is supposed to be performing from home?
If there are questions regarding productivity, then address those. If the employee is expected to contact clients, ask them to track and provide a list of who they contacted, where, and how. If the employee is accessing records, check with IT to determine if number of records accessed by user is being tracked. Depending on the nature of the accommodations, expecting a WFH employee to notify their supervisor when they start/stop work is a reasonable expectation.
Measuring the productivity output of two similar employees is also reasonable. If you have two WFH (or one in office and one WFH), one without accommodations, and one with accommodations, the difference in production may be a contributing factor to the effectiveness of the accommodation.
Under ADA, if there are concerns of productivity, it is okay to review the effectiveness of the accommodation.
“Hi Skeeter, we need to review the accommodations that are currently in place. Previously, you were producing 57 widgits per day. Currently you are only producing 22 widgits per day. This is well below expectations. So we need to look at other options to help improve your productivity up to expected levels.”
“Hi Skeeter, I see that you were able to contact 15 clients this week, and over the last few weeks, this seems to be consistent. However, as you know, our expectations are that clients are contacted at least once every two weeks. With 90 clients assigned to you, I don’t see you being able to meet this expectation. Can you help me understand what’s going on?”
There’s softwares to monitor employee activity where they screenshot what they’re doing every so often. Places don’t like to use it because if the data is ever hacked and you work in health care you could potentially leak a bunch of patient info.
Anyway, I would look at one of those softwares instead. I wouldn’t drive to an employees house. That’s fucking weird
There is no way I would do that.
And this is how you get arrested for stalking. I’d tell your employer if they’re hellbent on observing this employee like this, they need to hired a licensed PI in your state to make sure everything is being done appropriately to cover the company. You doing this would open the company up to a lot of liability and probably you as an individual as well, and that isn’t something that works.
This is a terrible idea.
Absolutely not. The only similar instance I can think of is during a workers compensation claim and that is outsourced.
absolutely not
They did it on The Office and it backfired. So there’s that.
> my supervisor has asked me to drive to this employees house and monitor their activity from my car as they work from home a few days a week.
What the….??? No. This is about 9 million kinds of wrong. Not a normal practice at all.
Your supervisor is….well, I don’t even know how to describe what I’m feeling about them…
What if some neighbors thought that you are an intruder and shoot you? There’s chances of randomness in this “order”.
I’d ask the manager to hire a private detective instead. You are just HR, not a spy.
Does IT have a way to monitor the employees actions? Like logging in, logging out, away time, etc? You could suggest that.