The European Court of Human Rights recently gave employers in Europe the green light to monitor employee’s personal communications at work, according to Amanda Sanders of Norton Rose Fulbright. The case came to the ECHR from Romania, where an employee had used his business Yahoo messenger account for personal correspondence, in breach of his employment contract. He was dismissed.
The employee argued the account monitoring breached Article 8 of the Convention for the Practice of Human Rights, explains Sanders. It protects the “right to respect for private and family life, the home and correspondence.” The court agreed this right had been engaged, but also said the employer balanced it appropriate with its interests. “It was not unreasonable for an employer to verify that the employee was completing professional tasks during working hours,” says Sanders.
