Τhe surveillance and monitoring of electronic communications in the workplace by employers

The European Court of Human Rights has issued a decision officially allowing the surveillance and monitoring of electronic communications in the workplace by employers

In a recent judgment (Bărbulescu v. Romania, January 12, 2016), the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”) has stated that employers are entitled to monitor and review the personal messages of employees exchanged during working hours via chats and electronic mail accounts.

The case reached the European Court when an employer in Romania terminated an employment agreement, after monitoring the employee’s Yahoo Messenger account. The records revealed that the employee made use of the specific web service not only to communicate with clients, as originally intended but, also, for personal communications.

Thus, the European Court examined whether the national Court had struck a fair balance between the applicant’s right of respect for his private life and correspondence, on the one hand, and his employer’s interests on the other.

In this case the Court noted that the employee violated his employer’s policies that prohibited the use of company resources for personal purposes and that the employer was entitled to verify that his employee was executing his professional tasks during working hours.

Hence, the above decision concluded that every employer should put in place a comprehensive Internet usage policy, which will determine the type of access that the employer will have to employees’ emails, and the ways in which he/she can collect the relevant material so as to prevent unlawful interception of employees’ private e-mails.