The Hidden Camera

Hidden cameras and other surveillance missteps can sour employees, threaten your success or get you sued.

When you've written a policy, don't be shy. Go ahead and shout it from the rooftops. Putting the policy in the handbook is a start, but only a start. (Here's an unshocking revelation: Not all employees read their handbooks.) Sure, you can take heart from the fact that the company is protected if an employee decides to sue for invasion of privacy, assuming that the cameras weren't filming anything off-limits. But why not remind employees of the policy periodically, so you can avoid any misunderstandings or ill will if employees for one reason or another feel like they're being watched inappropriately? Why wait for a potentially embarrassing and expensive lawsuit?

Shaw believes that just communicating the fact that a company has a policy can act as a deterrent to potential wrongdoers. She cites three to four major retail clients with large distribution centers: "Once they announced their policies, theft went down because people knew [their companies] were watching."

DO take the time to tell employees why you use cameras.

This point goes beyond reminding workers that you have a policy, because a little bit of sensitivity can go a long way toward preventing employee resentment.

Explaining the reason for the cameras has proven to be a critical step for Bielec at SAS. In 1993, the company built what's known as Building R on its Cary, N.C., campus. A security control center was located in the subbasement to monitor the new CCTV cameras that were being installed around the campus in lobbies, building entry points and the campus day care. (Before 1993, Bielec says, SAS's use of CCTV was minor.)

Bielec was pleased. But he failed to anticipate the displeasure that spread its way through the employee ranks. Soon rumors started floating around that there were covert cameras. Questions arose: Why are they putting in cameras? What are they watching? Why do we need so much surveillance? When word started getting back to Bielec, "terror ran up and down my spine," he recalls. "I had done my best to develop a relationship with the employees," he says, but now he worried that he was about to take a giant step backwards.

Bielec had an inspiration. Because two sides of the control center were glass, he decided to turn the monitor banks around, so that the monitor screens faced outward. With this change, any SAS employee walking by the control center can see exactly what the cameras are being used to observe. "I told employees, come on down, you can see what we're looking at. We can show you how [the system] works; we'll let you play with the joysticks," he says. "That alone allayed the monitoring fears."