Last week the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, published the third part of the Employment Practices Data Protection Code – Monitoring at Work. The aim of the Code is to help employers comply with the Data Protection Act.

There are some interesting things in this.

It will usually be intrusive to monitor your workers.

Workers have legitimate expectations that they can keep their personal lives private and that they are also entitled to a degree of privacy in the work environment.

If employers wish to monitor their workers, they should be clear about the purpose and satisfied that the particular monitoring arrangement is justified by real benefits that will be delivered.

These guidelines mean that employers could be in breach of the Act if they monitor staff email.