Wilkes Partnership comment: Private message ruling important reminder for employers…
Following a decision from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), that an employer can monitor an employee’s private messages at work, Lisa Outram, employment law expert at The Wilkes Partnership, comments:
“The outcome of the above recent ruling from the ECHR serves as a reminder for employers to ensure they have suitable policies in place that outline the standards that must be observed by employees, the right of the company to monitor use of its own IT systems, and the likely outcome for employees if the policies are breached.
For the employer to protect its position as far as possible, such policies should be clearly communicated to employees and kept under review on a regular basis. Any monitoring carried out by employers should only be undertaken if it is proportionate to do so and, wherever possible, employers may wish to obtain employees’ express consent beforehand.
“In this case the employer had a genuine justification for monitoring the messages, and isolated their review to the messaging account rather than accessing other information stored on the employee’s computer. It was held that the employer had acted proportionately in these circumstances, which is an existing key principle when determining whether monitoring can be justified.
“Although this ruling doesn’t change current laws it is a useful restatement of existing legal principles applicable in this area.”
For more information on The Wilkes Partnership, go to www.wilkes.co.uk.
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