Email Monitoring - Employee Right to Privacy in the Work Place

The employee has a right of privacy under Article 8 of the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) to privacy in the work place.  With relation to emails, the sending and the receiving of private emails on or via computer equipment owned by their employer, but they can however agree to waive this right away in respect that an employer can monitor their email correspondence only if:-

1. It is in accordance with a strict company monitoring policy document and the company must strictly adhere to the way in which they carry out the monitoring of emails and,
2. There must be an employee contract document in place for each individual that refers to this above policy that was in place at their contract commencement and inside this contract document it must expressly mention that the company will monitor email communication. If that the employee has signed such a document then monitoring can take place.

To cover Mark Andrew Smith Limited of any claims made, employers will need to submit these documents by confidentially faxing to us and we will set up the monitoring copies if requested. If these documents cannot be produced, then we shall strictly adhere to Article 8 of the ECHR whereby no monitoring may be permitted by the employer.