Employee monitoring has become increasingly popular among employers around the world. Here’s why:
- To see how much work employees are doing
- What websites they’ve accessed
- What chat apps they’ve been using and for how long
U.K. law allows employee monitoring
U.K. law protects an employer’s right to use employee monitoring software. Employers must explain the monitoring in an employee handbook or contract. They should tell workers:
- If they’re being monitored
- Whether personal emails and calls are allowed
- How many personal emails and phone calls are allowed
Monitoring can involve:
- CCTV in the building
- Checking emails or websites
Workers should be able to check the employee handbook or their contract to review a company’s monitoring policy. Employers are not allowed to monitor workers everywhere, such as not in the bathroom. Such unlawful monitoring could put them in violation of the Data Protection Act. Workers may be able to resign and claim unfair dismissal if employers don’t have a written policy on employee monitoring or if it’s not clear.
Let Them Know They’re Being Watched
While U.K. law allows employee monitoring, employers must make it exceedingly clear to employees that they’re being monitored. Situations like these are best handled with monitoring solutions that run visibly, as they make it much harder for employees to later claim grievances because they allegedly weren’t aware of monitoring. We checked out a few leading solutions to see how they measured up to this requirement. Here’s what we found…
Invisible Software doesn’t cut it
Employee monitoring software ActivTrak is not visible. Its website states, “Users will have no indication that they are being monitored. The Agent does not appear in the Add/Remove programs list and is not recognizable from the Task Manager.”
Digital Endpoint – UK Compliant
Digital Endpoint employee monitoring software users can leave an icon on a worker’s desktop that shows it’s installed. Digital Endpoint also offers the employer the ability to change the visibility of the program from the remote control panel. To find out more about employee monitoring, please go to the Digital Endpoint website.