PHYSICAL PRIVACY
Policy and prohibition measures, as well as PIPEDA and other
privacy acts, deal with the safeguarding of information, but there’s
also the issue of privacy of physical spaces and documents. If an
employer decides it’s necessary to conduct a search of a particu-lar
workspace, for example, some guidelines should be followed.
“For searches of this nature, you’ve got to be careful because the
Criminal Code comes into play. What you’re doing could be an
unauthorized search,” said Piccolo. “To counter this, you can create
a policy that makes it very clear that these physical searches will be
conducted from time to time, with reasonable cause.”
NO-FLY ZONES
Despite an employer’s right to basic information about an employ-ee,
some details will always remain off limits.
“Things like marital status, race, religion, sexual orientation –
those are good examples of information an employer doesn’t need,”
said Bolton. When an employer has knowledge of this kind of in-formation,
it can lay the groundwork for a human rights complaint
in the future if an employee feels any of those details have been the
cause of unfair treatment.
An excess of information about an employee’s medical condi-tion,
too, can be a problem for an organization.
“An employer can ask about medical information in the context
of returning someone to work following illness or injury or to sub-stantiate
an illness for someone off work,” said Bolton. “But this
cover feature
“COMPANIES WHO WISH TO
MONITOR THEIR EMPLOYEES’
USE OF TECHNOLOGY
WILL WANT TO SPELL
THIS OUT EXPLICITLY AND
STATE IT PUBLICLY.”
– PATRIZIA PICCOLO, PARTNER, RUBIN THOMLINSON LLP
should be limited to information about the prognosis or any re-strictions
necessary to perform work when they come back.”
A manager doesn’t need to know, for example, that an employ-ee
has a specific mental illness. She only needs to know how the
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