Following hot on the heels of our seminar earlier this month on monitoring employees at work, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has provided welcome guidance on the use of surveillance by employers of their employees to detect potential misconduct.<\/p>\n
In the case of City and County of Swansea v Gayle<\/span> <\/em>the Claimant was employed by the Council, who received information from one of its employees that the Claimant had been seen at a local sports centre playing squash, when it was believed he should have been at work.\u00a0 One month later, the Claimant was again seen playing sports when he should have been working – and indeed had left a message for his manager confirming that he was “at work” at the time.<\/p>\n As a result, the company elected to use a private investigator to track the Claimant’s whereabouts.\u00a0 The Claimant was then recorded outside the sports centre on five separate occasions when he should have been at work.\u00a0 The Council instigated disciplinary proceedings against the employee, who was subsequently dismissed for leaving work for personal reasons.\u00a0 Mr Gayle then issued an Employment\u00a0Tribunal claim for Unfair Dismissal.\u00a0 Here, the Claimant was arguing that his employer’s actions in secretly following him were a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (a right to a private life).<\/p>\n Whilst the Employment Tribunal agreed with the Claimant’s argument and found in his favour, the Council appealed to the EAT, who\u00a0took a different view.\u00a0 They subsequently clarified that\u00a0an employee should have no expectation of\u00a0privacy when he was engaging in conduct designed to defraud his employer.\u00a0 The EAT also noted that the filming had taken place in a public place, which affected its decision as to whether the Claimant’s expectation of privacy was reasonable.\u00a0 As a result, the original Unfair Dismissal verdict was overturned (although it should be noted that the Employment Tribunal who originally heard his claim\u00a0declined to award Mr Gayle any compensation in any event, due to his contributory conduct).<\/p>\n This case confirms that there are certain circumstances where it is appropriate and lawful to use surveillance techniques on employees inside or outside the workplace but a careful balancing of rights is required in each case and certainly no covert monitoring of employees should take place without obtaining legal advice first.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following hot on the heels of our seminar earlier this month on monitoring employees at work, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has provided welcome guidance on the use of surveillance by employers of their employees to detect potential misconduct. In the case of City and County of Swansea v Gayle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,17,7,18,19],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-cctv","tag-disciplinary","tag-employment-law","tag-hr","tag-surveillance"],"yoast_head":"\n