Areas of Interest

by Michael Marion

Credit unions inquire every so often whether they can monitor and/or record phone conversations between their employees and individuals (usually members) who call the credit union for one reason or another. Basically, this is permissible provided that he credit union has properly notified the parties involved. It can't do the monitoring or recording secretly.

There are two groups of affected individuals, and the credit union's obligations to inform them differ somewhat. The two groups are, of course, the people who call and the employees who speak with the caller.
Likewise, a credit union may have a variety of motives. First, it may want to record a call in case the caller later disputes what was done as a result of the call. Second, the credit union may wish to monitor or record calls to assist in developing more efficient procedures for its personnel. And third, such items may end up being use as part of training or disciplining a specific employee.

First, the caller. The caller needs to be informed that the phone conversation is not totally private. This can be done most efficiently by having a lead-in, recorded message stating that the phone call may be monitored or recorded for quality or training purposes.

Second, the credit union employee . Employees need to be informed, as part of an employee handbook, that calls may be monitored and/or recorded. This could be part of a broader policy concerning use of company phones. Similar to the credit union's e-mail policy, employees need to be informed that the phones at their work locations are company property, and that calls may be monitored and/or recorded, and that they should have no expectation of privacy. Note that if the credit union has set aside phones in private areas intended to be used for personal calls, it should not be monitoring or recording the content of calls made on such phones in any way. However, it can have a policy concerning the length of such calls during working hours and, if it so notifies the employees involved, it can track the numbers called and link them to employees for billing purposes. It can also prohibit calls to ‘900’ numbers, etc.

The penalties for failure to comply vary. Failure to tell the caller could subject the credit union to both civil and criminal penalties and might cause the credit union not to be able to use the information obtained as evidence in a later quarrel with the caller. Failure to inform employees could invalidate any personnel action based on the information obtained and/or could subject the credit union to a claim for damages.

The key is making sure everyone knows what is going on ahead of time. If someone is legitimately surprised that a call has been monitored or recorded, something has gone wrong that needs to be fixed.