Employer reading emails without consent.

tightauldgit

prowla said:

Who owns the laptop and is it provided for work purposes?

If people aren't doing their work then they're not being given enough work to do...

Or maybe they are good at their jobs and finished in an hour what all the "hard-workers" who put in the face time take a whole day plus a couple of hours of overtime to do?

Any employer that was monitoring me to this apparent extent would be my ex-employer in short notice. 

Constantly monitoring and punishing your workers went out of fashion with the cotton fields. It's also something that is wide open to potential abuse. 

happyc84

prowla said:

Who owns the laptop and is it provided for work purposes?

If people aren't doing their work then they're not being given enough work to do...

The original question related to a company who fired someone who they said wasn't pulling their weight during 1 week of  work after 4 months from starting date. The working pattern was office 60% site works 20% and WFH at 20%; as an example week 40+ hours.

As there was no written policy - will put this down to lessons learned, I also resigned from this company for other reasons.

The notion that person A who works constantly from 9-5 is more productive than someone Person B who does not is outdated.

For those who complain about others - how many work hours are lost due to their own idle chat.  

Undervalued

happyc84 said:

prowla said:

Who owns the laptop and is it provided for work purposes?

If people aren't doing their work then they're not being given enough work to do...

The original question related to a company who fired someone who they said wasn't pulling their weight during 1 week of  work after 4 months from starting date. The working pattern was office 60% site works 20% and WFH at 20%; as an example week 40+ hours.

As there was no written policy - will put this down to lessons learned, I also resigned from this company for other reasons.

The notion that person A who works constantly from 9-5 is more productive than someone Person B who does not is outdated.

For those who complain about others - how many work hours are lost due to their own idle chat.  

Well with less than two years service they didn't even need a reason to fire the employee. As long as the real reason didn't amount to unlawful discrimination (e.g race, religion, gender etc) they cannot claim unfair dismissal with less than two years service.

Brie

I agree in principle that an employer should be allowed to monitor (up to a point) what their employees do during working hours and particularly with the equipment/systems provided to do that work.  I don't agree that they should be allowed to have cameras on, second by second watching what the employee does - except where there is a real danger of fraud/theft. 

I worked for a company that had a cash room and there were cameras everywhere and the employees knew that.  They also knew that no mobiles were allowed anywhere.  The cameras were there to ensure that no one pocketed any cash - which protected both the company and the employee as you can't be accused successfully for something that you can prove didn't happen.  No mobiles was necessary as there was also a lot of very sensitive documents and given that mobiles have cameras it is possible to snap a pic and show it to someone outside.  If someone had an emergency (waiting for a call from Dr etc) their mobile could be left at a spot away from the work so it could be heard and answered if it was agreed in advance with their floor manager.

As for WFH though or even in the office - we all differ in our abilities to work efficiently and at different times of the day.  I plod in the morning and go high speed at some point after lunch.  Again - at a company where I worked the monitoring was done by quality checking work and actual volume done.  We had one colleague who was both super efficient but also very stressed due to the type of calls she was given (very vulnerable clients) and so it was accepted that she had a jigsaw puzzle on the desk next to her which she would work on while she was chatting on the phone to clients or when taking a break between calls.  I'm sure it looked very odd to visitors but was a great way for management to help her do her job so well.

Andy_L

pinkshoes said:

happyc84 said:

superbigal said:

I also suspect the OP has created this post during working hours 

Hi, I'm resting between jobs. The question came up because we were never made aware that management would review our workload remotely. Small company bought over by larger one, very chaotic in every way.

So no written policy, hence the question.

 

I don't see why they need a written policy. They are paying you to work so if they suspect someone isn't just working then quire rightfully they should check!

Given it will be time consuming to check, they're hardly going to do it without due cause.

If you don't like the idea then go to the office and work?

My husband works for a company and had their WFH policy reduced from 3 days to 2 days due to people taking the p*ss and not working. 

because its a legal requirement that they inform employees they are being remotely monitored

Undervalued

Andy_L said:

pinkshoes said:

happyc84 said:

superbigal said:

I also suspect the OP has created this post during working hours 

Hi, I'm resting between jobs. The question came up because we were never made aware that management would review our workload remotely. Small company bought over by larger one, very chaotic in every way.

So no written policy, hence the question.

 

I don't see why they need a written policy. They are paying you to work so if they suspect someone isn't just working then quire rightfully they should check!

Given it will be time consuming to check, they're hardly going to do it without due cause.

If you don't like the idea then go to the office and work?

My husband works for a company and had their WFH policy reduced from 3 days to 2 days due to people taking the p*ss and not working. 

because its a legal requirement that they inform employees they are being remotely monitored

Even so, whilst a failure might get the employer a slap on the wrist from the ICO, it doesn't stop them from taking disciplinary action based on what they have found out about the employee's behaviour. Employment is not like a criminal case with tight rules of evidence. All an employer needs is a "reasonable belief" that the misconduct took place.

In any case this is all a moot point as the OP has resigned and the employee who was apparently dismissed had less than two years service!

Dakta

'how' you gather information can be important, and I re-iterate even if you forget the ICO, internal policies especially on better managed firms may make more of an issue with the how the data was obtained as opposed to the what.

I do agree as it turns out user is under the 2 year mark it's not likely worth chasing in this case, but it's important to only roll over for the right reasons, and taking time to assess your situation is free.

Smithcom

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.

This sounds like a good positive move by the employer, to ensure that their employees are actually working whilst at home.   

If they staff are doing what they should be doing (and being paid for), they will have absolutely nothing to worry about.

What is your concern?  

SC

tightauldgit

Smithcom 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.

This sounds like a good positive move by the employer, to ensure that their employees are actually working whilst at home.   

If they staff are doing what they should be doing (and being paid for), they will have absolutely nothing to worry about.

What is your concern?  

SC

Yeah I can't think of any reason why an employer might not want to appear to model itself on a Victorian workhouse either.

Smithcom

tightauldgit said:

Smithcom 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.

This sounds like a good positive move by the employer, to ensure that their employees are actually working whilst at home.   

If they staff are doing what they should be doing (and being paid for), they will have absolutely nothing to worry about.

What is your concern?  

SC

Yeah I can't think of any reason why an employer might not want to appear to model itself on a Victorian workhouse either.

Victorian Workhouse.  Aw bless.  

I do appreciate that these days, employee like to tell employers when they are going to work.   One of the reasons that there are so many problems in the UK, not least DVLA and any other number of Government Depts.

SC.