Big Brother at work

Phone-tapping
Lots of employers routinely tap telephones. They argue it helps to assess employee performance, ensure customer satisfaction and record evidence of business transactions. Again, a blatant breach of what most believe is a right to privacy at work. Your boss could be listening in to details of what your boyfriend's going to be cooking for your supper, or discovering just how irate your bank manager is about your overdraft. Surely, this time, there's something you can do about it? Sorry - the RIP code allows your employer to tap your phone, on the same grounds that emails can be monitored.

Human Rights Act
So, is the Human Rights Act going to help in the fight against RIP and Big Brother? On the face of it, the Act gives you a number of rights - including respect for your private and family life, your home and your correspondence. Sounds good - the monitoring of phone calls, emails and the use of CCTV all potentially breach these freedoms. But the Act only applies directly to public employers - and even here, there are a number of defences. If your employer:

So, Big Brother is most definitely out there. Do you play him at his own game, or do you stick your neck out and risk getting the boot? The safe advice must be to use your company phone and computer reasonably - employers will rarely dismiss on the basis of only moderate personal use of their equipment. Your employer should be making it quite clear to you what is and what isn't acceptable use of its systems ? if it doesn't, chances are any action it takes against you won't be lawful.

It's definitely true to say that companies are worried about the effect of heavy-handed monitoring on staff morale. But, like me, you may still find it deeply disturbing that they're monitoring everything you do - and that they can get away with it.