Employer reading emails without consent.

GrumpyDil

Yup, my employer has a clear policy on email including allowing non excessive personal use (why would you anyway) and monitoring of inbound and outbound emails.

If you don't want your employer to see emails use a personal account instead. 

Mr.Generous

I'm truly shocked by this. Are we suggesting that people who "work" from home may be doing other things for a good proportion of the time they are being paid to work??

Hang on a minute while I take the kids to school, put the washing out, walk the dog and do the shopping, then before I add detailed comment to this thread I'd better send a couple of pointless work emails to make it look like I'm hard at it.

Dakta

Whilst the stock answer would be 'its the company's equipment and you should expect no right to privacy when using it' it's also an interesting question.

It's also a bit of a toughie, because we live in a world now that does place ever increasing value on privacy.

The first thing I would ask is, if I was in this scenario - is this documented, is the company being transparent about it? It's not unusual you see for companies to log and even read emails. My company does it, and I know that because that's occasionally my job. We have a policy in place everyone has to sign which says this, and these do get used for a) preventing harm to the business (from people sending emails they shouldn't) b) preventing harm people may accidentally do to themselves and investigations and so forth.

It's all totally above board, but actually one thing that isn't routinely done here is email monitoring IN CASE performance is low, i.e to read someones email you must already have some mind of suspicion or requirement to investigate a specific person in a specific timeframe etc. You couldn't just read peoples emails wholesale hoping to find a slacker...

So I'd have a look into the context of the monitoring of emails, I'd have a look at any agreements or policies and ensure in the first instance that the company is being transparent and reasonable, and always assume what you write can or will be read - whilst this may not always  be the case it's a totally healthy best practice.

I would also advise, marking emails as confidential and for the marked recipient only, this is because I have been in a similar position in the past, I have found people making use of information from an email of mine that was read, and whilst the reading of it wasn't against policy, it turned out the way that information was then put to use by someone other than the clearly marked intended recipient WAS. Oh dear.

So yeah that's not quite the same thing admittedly but I'd always be mindful. 

Spendless

Why use a work's laptop to send/receive personal emails anyway. In the event that one is needed to be sent/read during the time you're working,  then many people have the email facility on their phone, use that instead. I keep mine by me for such reasons when I WFH

Andy_L

happyc84 said:

Hi, The company I work for are reading emails from Employees and are taking action against some of the staff, saying that they were working from Home and not doing enough work, this is from looking at their work laptop.

Do they need to tell the staff that all activity is being monitored. They didn't complete a agreement during on-boarding so interested to see if this has happened in your work place.

Is this 2 separate issues?
Reading employee's emails and remote monitoring of work output? (eg log in times, inactivity, time spent browsing MSE etc) Or are they concluding that people are slacking based on the content of their emails?

goater78

Dakta said:

Whilst the stock answer would be 'its the company's equipment and you should expect no right to privacy when using it' it's also an interesting question.

It's also a bit of a toughie, because we live in a world now that does place ever increasing value on privacy.

The first thing I would ask is, if I was in this scenario - is this documented, is the company being transparent about it? It's not unusual you see for companies to log and even read emails. My company does it, and I know that because that's occasionally my job. We have a policy in place everyone has to sign which says this, and these do get used for a) preventing harm to the business (from people sending emails they shouldn't) b) preventing harm people may accidentally do to themselves and investigations and so forth.

It's all totally above board, but actually one thing that isn't routinely done here is email monitoring IN CASE performance is low, i.e to read someones email you must already have some mind of suspicion or requirement to investigate a specific person in a specific timeframe etc. You couldn't just read peoples emails wholesale hoping to find a slacker...

So I'd have a look into the context of the monitoring of emails, I'd have a look at any agreements or policies and ensure in the first instance that the company is being transparent and reasonable, and always assume what you write can or will be read - whilst this may not always  be the case it's a totally healthy best practice.

I would also advise, marking emails as confidential and for the marked recipient only, this is because I have been in a similar position in the past, I have found people making use of information from an email of mine that was read, and whilst the reading of it wasn't against policy, it turned out the way that information was then put to use by someone other than the clearly marked intended recipient WAS. Oh dear.

So yeah that's not quite the same thing admittedly but I'd always be mindful. 

I don’t think it’s an interesting question at all. The equipment (including email) is owned by the company. They have the right to monitor how this is used. There is no right to privacy in this scenario. 

As well as viewing emails I would also expect periodic scans will be run against all documents on the laptop/pc to check for anything that shouldn’t be there e.g. customer data. 

TELLIT01

Andy_L said:

happyc84 said:

Hi, The company I work for are reading emails from Employees and are taking action against some of the staff, saying that they were working from Home and not doing enough work, this is from looking at their work laptop.

Do they need to tell the staff that all activity is being monitored. They didn't complete a agreement during on-boarding so interested to see if this has happened in your work place.

Is this 2 separate issues?
Reading employee's emails and remote monitoring of work output? (eg log in times, inactivity, time spent browsing MSE etc) Or are they concluding that people are slacking based on the content of their emails?

Put simply, if somebody is reading and sending personal e-mails in work time they aren't doing their job.  Therefore, yes they are slacking.  I worked in IT for over 30 years and always had the ability to check anything and everything that was done using a work computer.  I had one instance where I was contacted by the team managing the entire company email system to ask me to speak to an employee who had 'unsuitable content' on their computer.  They were giving the person the opportunity to remove it as it was very much at the lower end of the 'offensive' range.  Basically cartoon !!!!!!.  If it wasn't removed within 24 hours they would escalate, and any repeat would immediately be escalated.  Staff were allowed to use computers to browse the interned during their breaks, but only then.  As all activity was timestamped it was easy to monitor.

DullGreyGuy

TELLIT01 said:

Andy_L said:

happyc84 said:

Hi, The company I work for are reading emails from Employees and are taking action against some of the staff, saying that they were working from Home and not doing enough work, this is from looking at their work laptop.

Do they need to tell the staff that all activity is being monitored. They didn't complete a agreement during on-boarding so interested to see if this has happened in your work place.

Is this 2 separate issues?
Reading employee's emails and remote monitoring of work output? (eg log in times, inactivity, time spent browsing MSE etc) Or are they concluding that people are slacking based on the content of their emails?

Put simply, if somebody is reading and sending personal e-mails in work time they aren't doing their job. 

No job should think that people are going to spend 100% of their working hours doing nothing but productive work... plan on that basis and you'll have constant issues of missing targets.

Depending on the nature of your role what is acceptable may vary. In my first call centre job, we only did inbound calls, you were supposed to sit in silence reading the operational handbook if you had a gap between calls and similarly werent allowed to talk whilst in wrap up after a call. That wasnt terrible when they got the resourcing right as calls were almost back to back but sometimes they got it wrong and you could have 5-10 minutes between calls. They were greenscreen terminals so no option of emailing or web browsing

Others were more relaxed, as long as your phone was available to take calls you could chat or read the paper etc between calls. Some allowed webbrowsing etc and they relied on their proxy services to block you going to "inappropriate" sites. Most the time email was internal only so other than arranging an after work do there was little personal use available. 

Dakta

goater78 said:

Dakta said:

Whilst the stock answer would be 'its the company's equipment and you should expect no right to privacy when using it' it's also an interesting question.

It's also a bit of a toughie, because we live in a world now that does place ever increasing value on privacy.

The first thing I would ask is, if I was in this scenario - is this documented, is the company being transparent about it? It's not unusual you see for companies to log and even read emails. My company does it, and I know that because that's occasionally my job. We have a policy in place everyone has to sign which says this, and these do get used for a) preventing harm to the business (from people sending emails they shouldn't) b) preventing harm people may accidentally do to themselves and investigations and so forth.

It's all totally above board, but actually one thing that isn't routinely done here is email monitoring IN CASE performance is low, i.e to read someones email you must already have some mind of suspicion or requirement to investigate a specific person in a specific timeframe etc. You couldn't just read peoples emails wholesale hoping to find a slacker...

So I'd have a look into the context of the monitoring of emails, I'd have a look at any agreements or policies and ensure in the first instance that the company is being transparent and reasonable, and always assume what you write can or will be read - whilst this may not always  be the case it's a totally healthy best practice.

I would also advise, marking emails as confidential and for the marked recipient only, this is because I have been in a similar position in the past, I have found people making use of information from an email of mine that was read, and whilst the reading of it wasn't against policy, it turned out the way that information was then put to use by someone other than the clearly marked intended recipient WAS. Oh dear.

So yeah that's not quite the same thing admittedly but I'd always be mindful. 

I don’t think it’s an interesting question at all. 

Cool?

I do though.

I would be very wary of advice given on a forum, having the technical means to check anything on a computer doesn't necessarily make it appropriate for an empoloyer to do so - so in this instance I would start with your computer use policies.

Undervalued

Dakta said:

goater78 said:

Dakta said:

Whilst the stock answer would be 'its the company's equipment and you should expect no right to privacy when using it' it's also an interesting question.

It's also a bit of a toughie, because we live in a world now that does place ever increasing value on privacy.

The first thing I would ask is, if I was in this scenario - is this documented, is the company being transparent about it? It's not unusual you see for companies to log and even read emails. My company does it, and I know that because that's occasionally my job. We have a policy in place everyone has to sign which says this, and these do get used for a) preventing harm to the business (from people sending emails they shouldn't) b) preventing harm people may accidentally do to themselves and investigations and so forth.

It's all totally above board, but actually one thing that isn't routinely done here is email monitoring IN CASE performance is low, i.e to read someones email you must already have some mind of suspicion or requirement to investigate a specific person in a specific timeframe etc. You couldn't just read peoples emails wholesale hoping to find a slacker...

So I'd have a look into the context of the monitoring of emails, I'd have a look at any agreements or policies and ensure in the first instance that the company is being transparent and reasonable, and always assume what you write can or will be read - whilst this may not always  be the case it's a totally healthy best practice.

I would also advise, marking emails as confidential and for the marked recipient only, this is because I have been in a similar position in the past, I have found people making use of information from an email of mine that was read, and whilst the reading of it wasn't against policy, it turned out the way that information was then put to use by someone other than the clearly marked intended recipient WAS. Oh dear.

So yeah that's not quite the same thing admittedly but I'd always be mindful. 

I don’t think it’s an interesting question at all. 

Cool?

I do though.

I would be very wary of advice given on a forum, having the technical means to check anything on a computer doesn't necessarily make it appropriate for an empoloyer to do so - so in this instance I would start with your computer use policies.

In which case I am puzzled that you have started seven different forum threads asking employment related questions.....

If it is not "appropriate" for an employer to check what an employee has been doing on a work computer, what useful, realistic and practical remedy do you feel is open to the employee?