All employers monitor their staff in some way or another. At one end of the spectrum this can involve simply requiring them to clock in or clock out. At the other end of the spectrum the form(s) of monitoring can be more intrusive, such as monitoring employee use of IT or email systems.
For employers in the hospitality sector, where the workplace is also, often, a public place, there may be CCTV cameras in the workplace as well. The legal framework is relatively complex and relevant legislative provisions can be found in a variety of sources, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Information Commissioner’s Code relating to employment practices – the latter of which advisers that employers should consider: why the monitoring is being carried out (i.e. what is the benefit, or the risk, to the company that the monitoring is designed to achieve, or prevent); and whether the intrusion into the workers' privacy is justified (i.e. is the form of monitoring proposed no more onerous than is strictly necessary).
The use of CCTV is referred to in the ICO's Employment Practices Code, however there is also a separate CCTV Code of Practice (an updated version of which is currently in draft form and was recently the subject of a consultation exercise). The ICO has also published a specific FAQ sheet for pub landlords (although this doesn't deal with the use of CCTV in an employment context). In many workplaces, particularly in the hospitality sector, CCTV will be used in the workplace primarily to monitor customers rather than workers (i.e. for the prevention of crime and for health and safety purposes).
The growth in recent times of use of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook has complicated matters further. A thread of case law involving employee misconduct through their use of social media has developed over the last decade and one of the consistent themes emerging from those cases is the extent to which the employers in question have infringed the relevant employees' right to privacy by accessing the employees' social networking accounts.
Monitoring of staff activity at work can be necessary for a variety of reasons. Generally speaking, as long as staff are aware of what is being monitored and why, this should cause no significant difficulties. However, an impact assessment should be conducted whenever any form of monitoring is being conducted. The more intrusive the monitoring is, the more serious the reason for it needs to be. Any information obtained through such monitoring must be kept securely and processed in accordance with the provisions of the DPA.
