Employers' rights to monitor office emails to be decided by European court

[PHDNM]

Employers' rights to monitor office emails to be decided by European court

ECHR ruling in case of Bogdan Bărbulescu could shape extent to which firms can monitor employees’ private communications

The extent to which employers can monitor their employees’ office emails could be shaped by a test case on workplace privacy to be resolved by the European court of human rights this week.

The final ruling in a long-running appeal brought by a Romanian man against his dismissal revolves around whether it was reasonable for his firm to investigate whether he had been sending private messages on his professional Yahoo Messenger account.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/sep/04/european-court-human-rights-strasbourg-to-rule-on-workplace-privacy-test-case

[Arduti]

Of course they should monitor what their employees do at work, but what's the employer's main concern? An employer should communicate clearly with its potential and current employees.

Are they just trying to figure out what their employees are doing online that requires so much bandwidth? This is a valid concern. Playing that YouTube playlist in the background all day. Watching Hulu or Netflix for an hour or two during lunch. Yes some people take two-hour lunches. Don't judge me.

Perhaps they don't want their employees sending things on company emails that could reflect poorly on the company. Another valid concern. Spy on 'em.

Or, are they concerned about productivity? If that's the case, they'll have to monitor not just the use of company-issued devices but the employee's use of personal devices, by monitoring the entire office space. I don't know if that's normal, but my company doesn't do this, and they don't have the right to know what I do when I take a break, or anything I do on my personal devices using my data plan and not company WiFi/IP. Although, I'm not sure taking that tone would foster trust from my employer, but also, an employer taking this tone with employees means he doesn't trust them, and those who can't trust can't be trusted. So when it comes to productivity, the employer should simply focus on if the end product was received by the deadline, and not care if other employees complain about the "amount of work" a colleague is doing. Because some employees produce better work in thirty minutes than others do the whole day, and it's not the awesome employee's fault that others have to work 3-4x as hard to produce something of the same level.