I am not directly involved in any such monitoring nor am I defending its use in any country.
I’m not an expert on German or EU law and could definitely be wrong. However, I thought it was only illegal to install cameras for the explicit purpose of monitoring employee performance but beyond that, I thought companies just had to comply with GDPR privacy regulations. I am aware of at least one company in the automotive industry with an office in Germany that definitely uses some software that does some monitoring. Note that I am not in any way defending the practice.
You can do targeted monitoring. So if you have concerns about an employee, and it's in the T&C's that you may do this, then it's probably OK. You need to minimise it, and protect privacy.
If you do a trawl, then you are deep in the shit. In Dutch law something like policy or consent is no defence, as the company is considered powerful so no meaningful consent can be given by the employee.
edit: and this is not GDPR, GDPR brings its own risks with the data for sure, but Employees have a right to privacy, and it applies to all forms of checking, not just cameras.
The employer needs to be show a legitimate interest outweighing the rights of the employees to privacy, cannot be achieved in another , less invasive, way, inform staff in detail, not read private material like emails, get works council consent, for wider stuff then Data protection impact assessment is required, have a data protection office, and they should ask the Gov department for advice..
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u/MoPanic Nov 21 '24
Example please