How legitimate are employee tracking programs?

“At work, you need to be engaged in working affairs” - this phrase filled teeth on edge with anyone who worked at least any significant amount of time as an employee. But those of the employees who climbed the career ladder feel how attitudes towards such attitudes change when you become a leader. Especially when it comes to protecting commercial secrets or simply monitoring the efficiency of the department.

A couple of months ago, our blog published a review of our staff monitoring program at the Workplace StaffCop Standard “ Under the hood ”, and after its publication we received a lot of feedback, including questions about how this is regulated by the laws of Russia. Naturally, we could not disregard this topic. Under the cut, we will tell you about the legal regulation of control over employees in the workplace - sure, this material will be useful for both employers and employees who want to protect their rights. Read!
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In one form or another, employers always supervised the work of employees: earlier they had to keep paper records or allocate an individual employee to supervise the work of everyone else, now that most of the main work tool is a computer, special control programs are used. But how legal is it?

Legal field

The law does not divide into separate groups the relations arising between an employee and an employer using computer technology, or without it. It is impossible to develop a new amendment every time a new computer program appears. Yes it is and to anything. Relationships, their subjects, the essence and the result do not change with the modification of the instruments of production. Whatever programs are used - we deal with the same labor relations in which the employee is obliged to perform work during working hours, and the employer - to pay for it.

Art. 21 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation obliges an employee to perform the work of high quality

“The employee is obliged to: conscientiously perform his labor duties assigned to him by the employment contract; comply with the rules of the internal labor regulations ... ".

Art. 22 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation gives the employer the right to control it. In addition, Art. 189 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation determines the rules of internal labor regulations.

The use of employee control programs does not contradict the specified norms. Moreover, an additional guarantee of mutual understanding for the parties may be the conclusion of a contract, which will indicate the need to use such programs. In this case, the employer will not intend to violate the rights of the employee.

There is an internal labor schedule, the employee is familiar with it. On the use of control programs notified. This means that constitutional rights are not violated (articles 23, 24 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation). Lack of intent of the employer knocks the ground from under the feet and the supporters of bringing the chief to justice under Art. 13.11 CoAp RF "Violation of the procedure established by law for the collection, storage, use or dissemination of information about citizens (personal data)", art. 137 of the Criminal Code "Violation of privacy" and art. 138 of the Criminal Code "Violation of the secrets of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraph or other messages."

Important points

First, it is necessary to distinguish between personal information and service, in the workplace a person is obliged to process and work with service information, which the employer has the right to control. At the workplace, an employee is required to use a PC as a work tool and process service information.

Having come to work, the employee does not have his time, this time he sold to the employer, so it turns out that a person who spends his work time on personal needs violated the employment contract a priori, not to mention the moral and ethical side. Of course, we can say that it’s all the little things and a couple of messages in the contact doesn’t mean anything, but if you move it all into the confines of a secret factory or other strategic object, it turns out that this is no longer a joke. For commercial structures there are also various kinds of information that it is better not to divulge. Of course, it will not allow us to enslave the foreign invaders, but it may well endanger the existence of one particular enterprise.

The second important point is the transparency of their use. The employee will work more efficiently, knowing exactly which functions of the control program are activated, what information can be collected, etc. The mere understanding of this will be the motivation for using working time for the same work purposes.

The third factor is self-motivation. Many freelancers use their time management programs — not for the eyes of others, of course. It is better not to use a computer on which a control program is installed at all to have a rest - there is a telephone, the ability to go out for a smoke / drink coffee, chat with colleagues. In terms of stress relief, this is much more beneficial.

And finally, the manager must understand his responsibility: he must manage the enterprise, and not track his subordinates. The manager is obliged to realize that the misuse of personal information that may come to him during the collection of official information may be prosecuted by law and this is at least not ethical. Intentional secret collection of personal information of an employee is illegal.

In developed countries with a rich history of the protection of rights and freedoms, the formula has been in effect for a long time that the percentage of public is inversely proportional to the percentage of private. The point is, a freelancer can work without leaving home in any way - a minimum of publicity, a maximum of personal space. At the same time, an employee of an elite corporation is forced to leave practically everything private behind the door of the working office and be 100% public at all, for 8 hours a day.

Another aspect

The employer should explain to employees that the implementation of monitoring systems is aimed at improving the efficiency of personnel work and its optimization, which is very often useful for the employees themselves. In our opinion, this is much more humane than the situation during the recent crisis, when everyone was dismissed indiscriminately, and the father of a family with a mortgage and small children could be unemployed. Monitoring and control tools allow you to see really working people, rather than skillfully pretending, this is a much more objective assessment factor than making decisions about dismissal on the basis of the manager’s personal attitude towards employees.

Summary

The employee must understand that when he comes to work, he will be obliged to focus on its implementation. At the same time, he clearly knows the forms and methods of control, and there are no surprises for him. In addition, responsibility for obvious violations of rights is clearly provided for by current legislation. In the end, it is a question of a person’s personal choice: type of activity, work format, company, in the end.

The employer must be aware of the responsibility for the deliberately secret collection of information (without the knowledge of the employee) and be able to explain the need to use control in this form.

Thus, with a legally competent approach, there are no problems in using such programs. You just need to be able to find the right solutions and fix them in mutually beneficial agreements. The employee and the employer should not be on opposite sides of the barricades, but should understand that they are doing a common cause and respect the rights and responsibilities of each other, clearly fulfilling mutual obligations.

PS We will be happy to hear in the comments questions related to the products of AtomPark Software : email service and email SMS ePochta and information security monitoring program StaffCop .

PPS And Atompark representatives will take part in tomorrow's November 30, St. Petersburg habrestrebe ! We will be glad to meet our readers personally;)