Companies in Europe have been given permission to monitor personal online communication their staff makes while at work.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided that employers could look to see if employees were using working hours to complete the work for which they were hired.
The question was taken to the ECHR by a Romanian engineer who was fired from his job in 2007 after his employers discovered that he was using Yahoo Messenger to chat with his fiancée and his brother as well as with professional contacts.
The company had advised him that it was its policy not to permit personal communication on the messaging app.
The engineer argued that his right to confidential correspondence had been breached.
The court did not agree. It said it was reasonable “that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours”. It also said that the company had accessed the messages in the belief they contained professional communications.
The ECHR’s rulings are binding on countries that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights.
It is important for staff to inform themselves of their employer’s policy on private communication during working hours.
