Electronic monitoring of employees' work - the problem of establishing a balance between employers' authorities and employees' rights to privacy

Abstract

The development of the internet and the emergence of modern technologies used at work in the modern age have made it harder to draw the line between the private and business life of an employee. This is especially challenging in the circumstances of the increasingly widespread flexibility of work, which allow work to be done outside the office, that is, remotely. In these circumstances, the employer's authority to monitor the work of employees and their productivity at work can often encroach on the employee's private sphere (by controlling the content used by employees at work, monitoring websites and communications with other employees and/or continuous video surveillance, not only in the office, but also by monitoring through cameras on lap-tops that employees use when working remotely. Consequently, national legislation are in need for establishment of adequate boundaries between employers' authority to control the work of employees and employees' right to privacy (in the workplace).

In the paper, the author points out the positive and negative aspects of electronic monitoring of employees' work and the necessity of adopting criteria in order to establish a balance between the interests of the employer and the employees right to privacy.