Employee monitoring

Employee monitoring refers to the monitoring of workers by employers. To have multiple objectives: Firstly, business processes should be optimized for different performance and behavior of employees should be monitored to detect misconduct in detail and it can prove. In addition, however, cases have been reported in which the privacy of the employees and their dependents was spied.

Employee monitoring affects both the privacy and protection of personal data and the operational human resources.

Legal developments

Germany

The employee data protection is often regarded as not sufficiently considered. Often, the works do not address adequately with the problem, although it 6 Works Constitution Act would be required to do so pursuant to § 87 Section 1 No. 1 and No..

After the decision of the German Federal Labour Court monitoring may only "in the necessary framework " will take place ( Federal Labour Court, judgment of 26 September 2008, Case No. 1 ABR16/07 ).

In February 2009, advocated Bsirske, head of services union Verdi, an employee data protection law. Reinhard Goehner, chief executive of the Federal Association of German Employers' Associations ), spoke out against it.

Eventually is to be introduced privacy about various legislative changes under the Act to regulate the employment data protection, the draft was approved on 25 August 2010.

Forms of implementation

Time and Attendance

• The time through clocks or magnetic cards are used in many places and recognized.
• However, more systematic collection of toileting or short smoke breaks would result in a complete movement profile of each employee.

Localisation

• In the field of transportation engineering staff can be located permanently on a version installed on the mobile phone software.
• In taxis even a complete tracking via GPS is possible and today's standard. Digital technology can also monitor the interior and transmit sound and images in the taxi office. The data storage of the transaction data was criticized in 2013 by the community of interest Bremen taxi driver.

Performance measurement

• Measurements of daily output, etc.

Video surveillance

• In particular, trading companies employ surveillance cameras to monitor that the employees commit themselves thefts. These companies include the discounter Penny Market net and Norma and Rewe, Tegut, Hagebau or Famila.

Communication Monitoring

• E -mail, Internet, telephone calls: can be inspected the communication, professional opinions through to privacy over the logging of surfing habits, inspect the e- mails and recording of phone calls. The community of interest Bremen taxi driver complained, among other things, the recording of customer calls.

Clean up

• At Telekom and German railway bank details of suppliers have been compared to wage and salary accounts of the workforce.
• Obtaining of credit bureau information is considered not permitted.

Use of detectives

• Use of authorized persons for controls such as test purchases, even as hidden in the Shopping Cart merchandise.
• Detectives are recognized to employees, such as in the case of illness or for monitoring of field staff
• Advanced protocols are often used to give observations to private relationships, heartbreaks, divorces, alcohol problems, illness, unemployed relatives

Leaked Eklats and litigation

In some companies, there were clashes that have become publicly known:

• Lidl: The company used private investigators to observe the behavior of the employees and also to explore behavior in the area of ​​privacy. The discovery led to the scandal in the spring of 2008. Lidl received a total fine in the amount of 1.462 million euros.
• The monitoring affair Deutsche Telekom employs the public in May 2008
• Gerling evaluated telephone and e -mail destinations of employees, as was announced in July 2008.
• Media Markt: The employees were threatened in the store Wolfsburg in October 2008 with a genetic test. The occasion was the repeated Bepopeln the men's toilets. In the Braunschweiger Zeitung reported. The trading company then threatened the newspaper with the setting of the advertisements, the newspaper had to reckon with losses in advertising revenue in the amount of 300,000 euros.
• Bahn AG: Secretly all official, private and social contacts were collected from about 1,000 top executives to create contact diagrams, as was announced in April 2009. The spouses were pried.
• The company Tiger paints, catfish, was accused in July 2009, created absenteeism rankings to have employees observed with hidden cameras and read along emails.
• An employee of a company has been monitored at the entrance with a camera. They successfully fought in October 2010, damages in the amount of 7,000 euros. According to court it was " a serious and persistent breach of the right to informational self -determination " ( Hessian Regional Labour Court, judgment of 25 October 2010 Az 7 Sa 1586/ 09).
• REWE admitted in April 2013 to have in the chain Penny monitored in individual cases, employees with video and adjusted with detectives.