New Guidelines Issued on Monitoring Employees in the Workplace

As email and the Internet become established as an essential business tool, new guidelines on monitoring employees in the workplace have just been issued under the terms of the Data Protection Act (the Act).

Published by the Information Commissioner, the third section of the Employer's Practices Data Protection Code relates to Monitoring at Work and is intended to help employers comply with the Act. The Code sets out core principles covering privacy in the workplace and the nature, extent and reasons for any monitoring to take place.

In the wake of numerous high profile cases of email and Internet abuse in the workplace, the Code has been given a cautious welcome by the legal profession.

Leading corporate law expert Tom Thomas, a partner at Glasgow-based law firm Harper Macleod, commented; "The Commissioner has acknowledged that monitoring at work is both an accepted business practice and also a key component of the employment relationship.  The Code provides both employer and employee with a degree of clarity and will assist employers in complying with their statutory obligations under the Data Protection Act and other relevant legislation such as the Human Rights Act 1988."

He continued; "There is widespread evidence that email and Internet abuse is taking place regularly in the workplace and this leads to issues of lost staff productivity, security of corporate information and pressures on bandwidth and storage.  Employers need to take ownership of email and Internet management, which is why guidelines have been called for on appropriate ways of monitoring workers."

Recent research by the Computer Science Institute suggests that Internet abuse by employees shows a 91% growth rate whilst 50% of employees report receiving racist, sexist, pornographic or otherwise inappropriate email at work (The e-policy handbook, 2002).  In addition, it is estimated that 90% of any company's intellectual capital can be found in a digital format, creating huge issues of confidentiality and corporate security.

Software is now becoming available which allows employers to manage and monitor email usage. Waterford Technologies has recently launched M@ilMeter version 2.0 for Microsoft Exchange, a non-invasive email management system that highlights trends, thresholds and usage patterns in order to address issues of effective email usage.   M@ilMeter tracks all emails that are sent or received by a company's employees and provides business reports that include information on email attachments, headers and domain names that emails are being sent to and received from.

M@ilMeter is available from Ogilvie Communications, who are joining Harper Macleod to host two seminars on Monitoring Employees in the Workplace on the following dates:

• Glasgow - Friday 27 June (8am - 10am), The Radisson Hotel, 301 Argyll Street
• Edinburgh - Thursday 3 July (8am - 10am), The George Hotel, George Street