ICO guidance on lawfully monitoring workers
Companies may be interested to know that the ICO has recently published its guidance, Employment practices and data protection – Monitoring workers, which gives helpful guidance to employers on monitoring their workers within the remit of GDPR.
Monitoring workers has become fraught with potential difficulties following the increase in remote working and developments in technology, which increases the risk that employers are monitoring private life. Monitoring can include tracking calls, messages, keystrokes, taking screenshots, webcam footage or audio recordings or using specialist monitoring software to track activity.
Employers who monitor their workers must:
- Make workers aware of the nature, extent and reasons for monitoring.
- Have a clearly defined purpose and use the least intrusive means to achieve it.
- Identify a lawful basis for processing workers’ personal data.
- Tell workers about any monitoring in a way that’s easy to understand.
- Only keep information relevant to the purpose.
- Carry out a Data Protection Impact Assessment for any monitoring that is likely to result in a high risk to workers’ rights.
For those who wish to read the guidance, we have included a link below:
Employment practices and data protection − Monitoring workers | ICO
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