Dealing With Employee Monitoring Legal Concerns
The fast pace of tech advancement has made a computer a staple in every office in the world. But it is often used for much more than work tasks, which is one of employer’s biggest concerns. Whether you’re worrying your employees are using office PC to play Solitaire for half their work day, or that they might be visiting suspicious websites where they can expose sensitive business data to malware and viruses, you probably want to ensure you know what’s going on behind office doors.
This is where employee monitoring software comes through the main door. You have all the legitimate reasons to know what’s going on in your company, but just like with any other technology, it drags along certain legal implications. Here we’ll elaborate on three aspects concerning legality of employee monitoring you should consider before implementing it.
Understand The Law and Comply
Get your legal facts straight. Take into account privacy and monitoring related laws that are in force in your country. In general, you have the right to use programs to monitor employees’ computers. After all, it’s your company, your office, your computers. It’s the extent of monitoring legality that differs from country to country.
Legal aspects of employee monitoring also differ from state to state within the US. Overall, according to the federal Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA), employees have the right to monitor almost everything employees do on computers and through the internet access they provide. In some states, employers are legally obliged to inform their employees about an employee work monitoring software being implemented, while in others they could proceed with monitoring without workers’ awareness or consent.
Since last year, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulates data privacy and security for all individual citizens of the European Union. According to this regulation, employers need employees’ consent to monitor them. However, there’s a catch — employer can proceed with monitoring employees’ work without their compliance if they have legitimate reasons for it. What’s more, EU guidance also states that employee monitoring shouldn’t be more invasive than it’s necessary for a legitimate business purpose.
Some European countries take a step further in protecting privacy in the workspace. For example, employees in Italy and Germany need to give a voluntary consent to be monitored, and that consent’s true voluntariness can be taken to court. In Finland, employees are even more protected, with Act on the Protection of Privacy in Working Life and Data Protection Act.
So, before implementing a computer supervision software, make sure you know your country’s laws. But don’t just stop at the legislation margins. Just because maybe your country’s laws only require you to inform your employees they’re monitored, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go the extra mile and ask for their consent, for example.
Make a Written Policy
The best way to make sure you’re complying with the law is to create a written policy regarding employee computer monitoring implementation. It should be detailed about the reasons for monitoring, what will be screened and how the data will be used. Moreover, the policy should set company rules regarding private use of office computers during working hours. Employees should be allowed to use them for personal affair during break times without fear of their sensitive data becoming available to their employer.
Even if a consent form isn’t a legal obligation in your country, it should be a part of the monitoring policy. This way they are stating they understand and agree to your rules, and you’re showing them you care about their compliance.
Put Employees’ Minds at Rest
Employee monitoring implementation doesn’t just happen out of the blue. You’ve created a written policy where you addressed all details relevant to the monitoring process, but your employees probably still have questions.
The best way to deal with this is to organize a Q&A meeting, both group and individual. Allow them to express their concerns and put their minds to rest about computer monitoring.
Use this opportunity to reassure employees you’re not the only one to benefit from employees’ tracking software. Show them how collected data can be used to measure everyone’s productivity highs and lows, which helps in organizing a work day in the most efficient way.
One thing you could to do show them monitoring is nothing to fear is to make yourself one of the boys (or girls!). How? By installing an employee monitoring software on your computer too. If you put all of your corporate and personal data on watch, they will be a bit more encouraged to do the same.
In Conclusion
These three aspects create a solid base for legal monitoring culture. By following them you’ll make sure to avoid negative effects monitoring could have on workplace culture, and move one step further towards employees embracing monitoring as their performance aid.
