Working from home has become more widespread and frequent since the corona crisis. As a result, there is more interest than ever in ways to monitor home workers. About the possibilities you have as an employer to monitor your home workers and the rules you have to follow in that context, I wrote the article "Monitoring home workers is allowed, but keep in mind the AVG" (1). In addition, the AP also recently released the Works Council Privacy Booklet, which offers help not only to works councils, but certainly also to you as an employer. Indeed, it describes the most important privacy rules from the AVG.
The increasing degree to which you and other employers monitor their employees apparently also caught the eye of the Personal Data Authority (AP), the body that supervises the processing of personal data in the Netherlands. Indeed, for it, this was reason to create a Works Council Privacy Booklet specifically for works councils. The Works Council Privacy Booklet was presented by the AP to the Social and Economic Council (SER), which has the legal task of promoting employee participation in companies and organizations.
Although the Works Council Privacy Booklet was written primarily to support works councils, as an employer you can also reap the benefits of its contents. This is because the Works Council Privacy Booklet presents in a nutshell the most important privacy rules from the AVG and discusses the role of the works council in the processing by you as an employer of the personal data of your employees.
In addition, the Works Council Privacy Booklet includes questions that the works council can ask you as an employer if you have plans to use a personnel tracking system. By a personnel tracking system, you should think of systems:
that record attendance, time and access of your employees,
that are placed in the cars your employees drive (a track and trace system),
In which customer contacts are kept, or
that support your employees in handling their work.
By law, as a business owner, you are required to establish a works council if you have a company that generally employs at least 50 people. This may also be the case with fewer than 50 employees, if the collective bargaining agreement requires it. Having 50 persons employed as a rule means that in most periods of the year, 50 or more persons are employed within your company.
Are you aware that the Works Council has the right to consent if you, as an employer, intend to make a decision on a regulation:
that relates to the collection, retention, use and security of your employees' personal data (think regulations on personnel files or on absence records),
that oversees a facility aimed at or suitable for tracking, for example, your employees' behavior or performance (think hanging cameras, but also implementing a system that records at what time which employee consults a file).
As you can see, since arrangements for processing employee personal data occur in every organization, as a larger employer you quickly run into the right of consent of the works council.
The right of consent means that you may only implement a decision if the works council has agreed to the decision. If the works council does not do so and you wish to stick to your decision, you still have an opportunity to implement your decision. You can ask the subdistrict court for permission to implement the decision.
(1) https://www.privacy-web.nl/artikelen/controleren-van-thuiswerkers-mag-maar-houd-rekening-met-de-avg
