Corporate Law Notes Blog recently posted an interesting article which should cause employers to carefully consider their policies concerning monitoring of personal email and other technologies in the workplace.

A Massachusetts trial court ruled that the employer did not adequately put the employee on notice that his personal email account (Yahoo in this case) would be monitored despite several warnings in the manual that "Internet activity" would be monitored.

The case emphasizes the need to specifically set forth in an employee manual that "the content of personal email" may be reviewed and monitored when accessed through company owned computers or other technology.  It also emphasizes the need to be specific about whether other technologies will be monitored including voice mail, cell phones, text messaging, etc.

The awareness of monitoring email or other communications in the workplace will likely increase given the congressional page scandal involving Mark Foley.