When an employee with key knowledge about your business leaves --- are you worried about theft of your company's information? 

And what is the business ethics of what you may be doing in snooping in the "employee's" computer.

All right, we know that your company's computer that the employee used in your business is not the "employee's" computer.  But that is not how employees think of the computer they use.  Recent surveys continue to report that over three-quarters of employees think their personal emails, internet picture downloading, and other activities on "my" computer is "none of the employer's business."

On the other hand you want to preserve evidence of the employee's predomination electronic activities, and may want to see everything on the computer!  The document files that were copied, the content of  emails, and transmissions of company data to a portable storage device or the employee's personal laptop may be something you need to known about. Are you taking preventive action to preserve possible evidence you may need to have?  What do your employees think of the action you are taking?  Is your action driving a wedge between present employees and management?

Suspicion of employee misconduct does not always occur when the employee leaves.  By the time it seems that the employee may have not had your corporate good in mind, the critical evidence you need may have already been erased, or reassigned to another employee, which probably will have destroyed potential electronic evidence.  One solution would be to have a forensic expert image the hard drive of each departing employee as soon as the employee walks out the door.  This is expensive, because a properly done forensic image costs hundreds of dollars.  A better solution is to have a member of the IT staff take charge of the computer when the employee walks out the door.  Then follow this checklist to establish what attorneys know as the "chain of evidence."

• Remove the hard drive of the computer.
• Record on a written form:
•      the date and the exact time of the removal of the hard drive.
•      the departing employee's name,
•      the computer's serial number, and
•      the hard drive's serial number,
• Sign and date the form.
• Place the form and the hard drive in an envelope.
• Seal the envelope and store it in a secure location.

Put a new hard drive into the computer and return the computer into use in the company business.  This procedure, because hard drives are now so inexpensive, is the most inexpensive way to preserve the possible evidence that even years later might want to be examined.

Make this a company "Standard Operating Procedure" when any employee leaves, and publish the procedure.  Put it in the list of things to tell every employees when they are hired.  You must be open and transparent about what you are doing and why.

The experts of Corporate-Ethics.US™ can advise you on further steps to take to make your corporate culture one of trust, even though you are doing things that the employees would distrust without a proper corporate culture.