Can we force employee to put personal information on our company internet site? 05-03-2006

Can an employer force an employee to put personal information on the corporate internet website? The links to individual staff are found on our "About Us" pages. The CEO wants full name, background, personal stories of travel and volunteerism, general family information, etc. The main issue is we have a part-time employee who is also a therapist and she is concerned that the personal information is not appropriate for her to have public and searchable as it is a detriment and possible danger to her in her other work. I agree with her. The CEO however, wants everyone to write and publish their personal story.

Thanks!

Rita Risser replies:

Legally speaking, the right of privacy only goes to information that is considered private. For example, if all of this information is available anyway, a court would say it's not protected. And this goes pretty far. Courts have said that a home address is not protected because anyone could follow you home and find it out. Who knows if courts today would follow that line of reasoning, but there are decades of court decisions going that way.

From a practical point of view, I would hope that she could just write out her concerns to the CEO and he would back off. If not, then if I was her, I would just make something up as a personal story and put it up there.

Good luck.

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