Employers must be overt when monitoring staff in the workplace

More than half of UK workers are concerned about being watched. SA Law solicitor Nikita Sonecha comments in People Management

Employers must be clear with their staff about their monitoring policies, experts have said, after a new report from the TUC revealed more than half of UK workers believe their boss monitors them at work.

The national survey of more than 1,200 UK workers, conducted by the TUC in May this year, found 56 per cent of people felt monitoring was going on in the workplace, through methods including CCTV, browsing history and phone logs. In addition, 6 in 10 believed the development of new technologies could increase these practices. 

While the majority of workers (70 per cent) believe workplace monitoring will become more common in the future with the development of new technologies, Nikita Sonecha, employment and data protection solicitor at SA Law, said it was unlikely any new legal changes would be required to accommodate increasing digitisation.

“As long as they keep their privacy policies updated and remain explicit about the new ways they are monitoring behaviour, recent changes to GDPR regulations should be sufficient over updating the law itself,” she told People Management. 

Click here to read the full article in People Management.

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