Need to keep tabs on your workers?
Here's how to prevent your 'I spy' attempts from becoming a joke -- or a crime.
By Angela C. Marek

1. Read them their rights. Even the baddest of bad spies (e.g., Owen Wilson, Eddie Murphy) have to read the bad guys their Miranda rights. You should do the same. "The crucial way you can protect yourself is to lower the employee's expectation of privacy within the workplace," says Reed Freeman, a privacy specialist at the law firm Collier Shannon Scott in Washington, D.C. Draft clear employee Internet-use policies before you push staff members up against your firewall.

2. Be a good cop. Once the snooping software is in place, your job as a manager is to enforce the new laws of the land evenhandedly. "The worst thing you could do is to set up a complex monitoring system that applies to only one employee," says Freeman. "The employee being monitored would then have a valid civil rights claim, and that just wouldn't be pretty."

3. Screen your sidekicks. Find out as much as you can about the employees who have your back, or at least your back-end systems. "Small businesses know that the people who handle their money have to be trusted," says Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and a former Clinton privacy policy advisor. "These days the people who handle IT have to be evaluated by those standards as well."

This article is reprinted with permission

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