As a result of corona measures, many employees still work from home. Although many positive sounds can be heard, it is not always clear to you as an employer how much work is done from home. And you may feel the need to monitor employees from home. But are you allowed to do this monitoring and what methods are suitable for this?
As an employer, you obviously want your employees to perform their duties in a timely and correct manner. In that context, you have the right to give work instructions and issue order regulations. In line with this, you must have the opportunity to check whether the work is being carried out correctly even from home. What should you keep in mind if you want to monitor your employees at home?
Monitoring employees is not prohibited. However, you must take into account the strict rules from the General Data Protection Regulation. This is because during such monitoring examinations, you process employee personal data.
Checking is allowed only, if:
There is a defined, explicit and legitimate purpose for doing so. For example, checking whether your employees are following work instructions;
There is one of the six bases in the AVG. The only basis that qualifies is the "legitimate interest" basis. The justification could be in checking whether your employees are following the instructions given to them. In addition, the monitoring must be necessary for the promotion of this interest and there must be no less intrusive monitoring options. Finally, the interest of you as an employer must outweigh the interest or privacy of your employees.
You inform employees prior to the investigations. Employees should know that the investigations may take place and should be informed about how the investigations may take place. You can include the possibility and manner of investigations in a personnel handbook, protocol or by-laws.
You are mindful of confidential employee communications.
If monitoring takes place on a large scale and you systematically monitor your employees, you must first conduct a DPIA. This is a tool to identify in advance the privacy risks of a data processing operation.
Has a works council (OR) been appointed within your company? If so, do not forget that as an employer you need the consent of the Works Council for a regulation concerning personnel control systems or a regulation concerning the collection, storage, use and security of personal data. So involve the OR in your plans early on if you want to start monitoring your employees!
Several methods exist for remotely verifying that your employees are doing their jobs correctly. For example, there is special software that can be placed on computers and phones, after which:
the number of keystrokes can be measured,
screenshots can be taken, or
pictures are taken of the home office via web cameras.
However, these are all control options that usually do not meet the requirements listed above. In many cases, you can achieve the goal by other means or your interest ultimately does not outweigh the interest of your employees. For example, you can usually control whether work gets done in a less far-reaching way by, for example, simply agreeing on exactly what an employee should do in a day.
There are conceivable situations in which far-reaching monitoring is allowed. If a criminal offense is suspected or the employee is suspected of violating company regulations, more is usually allowed.
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