The remote and hybrid modes of working are being utilized by most of the organizations. As a consequence, so is the employee monitoring in a bid to enhance productivity and protect company assets. On the other hand, limitations also exist on this capturing of images and videos of employees engaging in certain activities on their computer screens.
Employee monitoring: The Legal Perspective
Every organization needs to monitor the activity of employees and many have management programs aimed at doing this. Such legislation usually has some guidelines concerning privacy rights which have to be adhered to. With regards to employee monitoring, the common processes have their processes for monitoring and recording the employee or an employee’s screen depending on the factors listed below as follows:
Country specific laws: The issue of employee surveillance does not seem to be homogeneous across the regions or countries. Laws are set by the native legal guidelines, ensuring compliance and protection. Taking the United States for instance, there are no national statutes criminalizing employee supervision, although every state has its own set of rules. In some states, their laws stipulate an opt-out policy, which California does not allow without prior notice to the communication being monitored or recorded. While in most other states, it suggests more relaxed control or none at all. In Europe, the general data protection regulation GDPR governs these issues in more amendments and imposes more stress on obtaining employees’ consent for the processing of their personal information.
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
Most jurisdictions allow employers to monitor employees during work hours as long as employees do not have a reasonable anticipation of privacy. When a company’s resources such as mobile phones x are utilized by employees, the employer is more likely to monitor the movements made by the employee. Nonetheless, such out of the workplace activities and use of personal devices, if any, falls within violating some privacy laws.
Employer Notice and Consent
Some legal systems for employees’ protection obliges that employees are advised when they are being observed. For instance, this could be an employee handbook, a policy document, or even a form that speaks of consent. Without such notice, legal actions against employers can be instigated, more so where surveillance is in excess inclusive of monitoring non-work related personal activities. Practicing civic honesty about monitoring is vital to legal measure.
What Is Legal?
To remain observing the law, most employers are legally allowed to undertake some certain practices termed as monitoring. Below are the monitoring practices which can be said to fall under the permissible range of monitoring practices.
Monitoring Company-owned Devices: Employers have the capacity to monitor certain activities relating to the use of devices of the company such as laptops, gadgets and even smartphones. This employee monitoring may involve internet use recording, keystroke recording, and screen capturing during the intervals when employees are at work. Businesses can use tools like Controlio. It is a versatile tool to monitor remote workers.
Tracking Work-related Communication: Management can watch correspondence including emails, chats, and other calls whether the communication is done on the company provided means. This is generally acceptable since, as long as the documents pertain to work, there is no problem in looking at them.
Time-tracking And Productivity Tools: In most of the organizations, some software is installed to measure the amount of time spent on various activities or assess the different sites accessed by the employees during the active working hours. Provided that the employees are notified and that the tracking is only during working hours, then this is legal.
What Isn’t Legal?
While employers have the jurisdiction to keep tabs on their employees, there are boundaries that should be maintained. This is vital as crossing these lines could invite some legal repercussions:
Monitoring Without Notice: This especially applies to being monitored when an employee has no clue that there is any form of watching over him or her and this is common in areas with strong data protection measures like the GDPR Act.
Tracking Personal Devices Or Accounts: In most instances, tracking someone’s personal mobile device, personal email address, or social media page without their consent is illegal. This is nonetheless still the case even if it is a telephone employed for lashed out purposes.
Recording Private Conversations: The use of monitoring or recording people’s conversations of a non work-related nature, especially, of those who are located in places where they would have the expectation of privacy (e.g. lavatories or breakrooms), is illegal.
Surveillance Outside of Work Hours: Monitoring could be done towards employees while they are clocked in, the employers cannot intrude on outside hours. There are restrictions regarding the use of screen monitoring software, the software that captures activity outside of working hours without a reasonable level of permission to do so is unacceptable.