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Everyone hopes that they don’t have to deal with any lawsuits, but they do happen sometimes.
If you allow employees to use their own phone or computer, those devices are fair game for the legal discovery process. Since those devices are likely not managed by you and because there is no telling what an employee has on those devices, that process could upset employees and drag you into lawsuits with your employees. And, if they don’t cooperate, trouble from the courts.
In at least one big case I can recall, issues with discovery caused the judge to tell the jury to assume that the undiscovered information was unfavorable to that side. They lost the case.
So what do you do?
The links below are from two law firms with information on the subject. Suffice it to say, this can get dicey very quickly.
There are a lot of things to consider, so I am going to let you read these documents. Here are just two.
If you THINK you may be involved in a lawsuit in the near future, under the law you have a “duty to preserve”. You MAY be able to do this on your corporate systems, but how to you do that on the personal GMail account on your employee’s iPhone? OR, what if your employees use one of those services where messages are automatically deleted after being read. Apple employees used one of them. The result was not favorable to them.
Second, before you let your employee use their personal devices, did you get written consent from them that you may have to search those devices in case of litigation?
There are many more considerations, but those are two biggies.
If you need help sorting this out, we are not attorneys, but this is not our first rodeo.