Employer tracking employee computers

There's a difference between recording and monitoring. For example, there's security cameras all over my building. But they're for security, not a management resource. Unless there's something on them which is required to be accessed for security reasons it's unusable from a management/ disciplinary perspective.

An example of this would be a recording routinely accessed showing i spend 3 hours a day in the bathroom or chatting in the corridor, as compared to recordings reviewed because stuff was going missing, and which shows me stealing company property. The first is unusable, the second is usable.

thomas 123

I worked for a very large tech firm for 5 years, in my last year there software was introduced that allowed your manager “drop in” to your work computer to observe you - In an ideal world this was a coaching tool where a decent manager would let you know he was going to do it at a certain time to achieve x , but my manager liked to use it to drop in at random unannounced and point out how I could use my mouse better to be more efficiently, I didn’t hang around much longer after that. ← that’s when he decided to send a message, god knows how often he was watching without finding some ridiculous thing to coach on.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058327861/employer-tracking-employee-computers

Under the GDPR, the employer is required to have and communicate a clear policy on what information they are processing, their basis for processing, where it is being stored and long it is being retained. So the first point of call would be to check your privacy policies for all this detail.
In general, the employer can't use information gathered for one purpose (such as cyber security) for an entirely different purpose (such as employee performance monitoring).
If the employer is not complying with GDPR, you can raise the matter with your union or with GDPR or both.

zg3409

On summary, they can, they do, they have permission in fine print somewhere

They also automatically rank employees on number of emails, amount of activity etc. This may be at manager level or only higher. IT have access to everything and no pop ups happen to warn you.

Ideally use work computer for only work. If applying for jobs elsewhere do not use work computer nor work email. Ideally dont browse random sites on lunch break.

If they cannot use the information in court they will find another reason to get rid of you. Top executives of banks have been dismissed for visiting adult sites on work computers, why they were not warned first may be that they wanted them gone anyway.

Mouse jigglers are used by some people to look busy, but I would assume most systems can detect them and detect users that work for a few minutes and then go missing for long periods. Be careful during personal phones and personal emails for work related things as it can break company policy on secrecy etc.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122218576#Comment_122218576

True and by the same token they are required to protect the data collected and that means if you are given a device to an employee that allows them to access such information then it is the employer's responsibility to ensure that they execute their privileged access to the data in accordance with the law.

For example, if you were a financial services professional and you travelled from Dublin to Zurich with a device that allow you to access client or staff data that would be a breach, because Switzerland is not part of the EU and their GDPR rules and bilateral agreement with the EU are slightly different. Likewise allowing access to French data, even in the EU is problematic because they have implemented the directive slightly differently for tax reasons and so on.

I'm retired now so I have little interest in the topic, but as I understand it from my wife who is very involved in data protection, that the BREXIT agreement with the EU has slight differences as well. So there may very well be very good reasons for tracking devices. In my day we tracked devices and did a factory reset on them if they turned up on the wrong place.

Kay_B7

I work for a company that uses an employee monitoring program - Spyrix Employee Monitoring. All employees of the company were notified about this in advance. When signing the employment contract, this point is highlighted separately and the consent of each employee is important. I believe that in this case it is completely legal.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122552713#Comment_122552713

What does it say in their Privacy Policy?