Employee Rights and Company Policies

Employee Rights: Obligations and Pitfalls in Litigation.

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According to the law, organizations are responsible for employee actions during work hours or work-related tasks. These actions can be digital, such as sending inappropriate content, email, using violating intellectual property rights, or physical accidents caused during the scope of the employment.

As stated in the article, “The purpose of this rule is fairly simple: to hold employers responsible for the costs of doing business, including the costs of employee carelessness or misconduct. If the injury caused by the employee is simply one of the risks of the business, the employer will have to bear the responsibility” (1).

However, they are exceptions to this rule. As further stated, “if the employee acted independently or purely out of personal motives, the employer might not be liable.” Therefore, depending on the scenario the employer might be responsible for the actions of the employee.

In the case, when an employee either posts a plagiarized content on the blog, or violates someone else’s privacy laws, or even leaks company trade secrets. The company is held responsible for all these actions.

Therefore, it is in the best interest of companies to create policies to protect themselves and the employees from litigations. The employees must acknowledge these policies and be educated in the proper terms. By acknowledging these policies, employees are bound by law in a duty to “to act always in the interest of the principal (company); the duty here includes that to avoid self-dealing and to preserve confidential information. The general duty owed by the agent (employee) encompasses the sorts of obligations any employee might have: the duty of skill and care, of good conduct, to keep and render accounts, to not attempt the impossible or impracticable, to obey, and to give information. The shop rights doctrine provides that inventions made by an employee using the employer’s resources and on the employer’s time belong to the employer.”(2)

References

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