Kavitha Gupta's blog

http://www.accdocket.com/articles/gdpr-employer-interests-and-employee-privacy.cfm A company collects the data of its employees throughout the employees’ lifecycle — beginning with recruitment and concluding with resignation, termination, or retirement. The data is collected and processed at all stages. Many organizations are deploying new digital HR technologies to better manage and support the entire employment life cycle, including in the cloud to analyse data that can lead to HR improvements. The rapid adoption of new technologies in the workplace has been useful in detecting the loss of intellectual property or data breaches by an employee. What’s more, there are now predictive analytics and location data from smart devices that improve employee productivity. However, these technological developments are sometimes seen as intrusive and pervasive ways of cheaper monitoring and have raised concerns and challenges about employee privacy and data protection. Such te...

Data Protection Authority backs decision to suspend employee for unauthorised access to company data Newsletters March 16 2016 | Contributed by Stanchi Studio Legale The Data Protection Authority recently found that an employer's decision to suspend an employee was legitimate in light of its right to defence against the employee's breach of Article 24 of the Privacy Code and Articles 2104 and 2015 of the Civil Code. Facts An employee appealed to the Data Protection Authority against his employer processing his personal data, which was stored on his work computer. The computer had been seized when the employee was suspended. It was subsequently subjected to a content check and a copy of the hard disk was made. The employee challenged the employer's actions as unlawful and arbitrary due to the absence of assurances regarding "the immutability of the contents of the PC" and the fact that the data acquisition took place "in his absence an...

Balancing the right to employer control with employee privacy concerns Newsletters March 02 2016 | Contributed by Schoenherr Rechtsanwälte Introduction Surveillance of employees in the workplace has long been a hot topic among managers, human resources professionals and employment lawyers. The development of IT equipment used in the course of work, the widespread use of social media, the increasing level of teleworking and other flexible working methods all require employers to implement new techniques to control their employees' work. Most jurisdictions have regulations which give employers the right to control their employees, and rightfully so. At the same time, employees have a legitimate expectation of both privacy in the workplace and appropriate protection of their personal data. Employers' rights of control are therefore always limited by employees' right to privacy. The recent European Court of Human Rights judgment in Barbulescu v Romani...

Repudiation of secret recordings of superiors and colleagues by employees Newsletters September 09 2015 | Contributed by S Horowitz & Co Employment & Benefits Israel The phenomenon of employees secretly recording their superiors and colleagues has become widespread. The reasons are varied – the employees may be: involved in a crisis; preparing for a lawsuit; or recording just in case, with no immediate reason. Often employees act upon legal counsel that the recording of a conversation in which they participate does not constitute a criminal offence, and that the contents of the recording will be valid as evidence if the dispute ends up in court. However, the lawfulness of hidden recordings and their validity as evidence do not reflect the whole picture, which includes aspects of inappropriate conduct on the part of the employees that may amount to dishonesty and breach of faith. When a cou...