united-kingdom employment privacy recording
Can I be recorded at work without my consent in the UK
<p>My colleague and I suspect that our employers are secretly recording us whilst at work. They have asked questions and passed comments on matters that they would otherwise have no way of knowing we had been discussing. We're just wondering whether there is any legal obligation for them to seek our permission before doing so. It coincides with us having a small issue over our working hours/pay that's owed and we think they're primarily checking that we stay until we're supposed to, which we always do, and beyond, despite never getting paid for it. We both feel very uncomfortable with the secretive nature of the recording, and feel it's morally dubious behaviour, but just wanted to know whether we could ask for it to stop.</p>

<p>Employers might monitor workers. This could be done in various ways, like:</p>

<p>CCTV,
drug testing,
bag searches,
checking a worker’s emails or the websites they look at
Data protection law covers any monitoring that involves taking data, images or drug testing.</p>

<p>If workers are unhappy about being monitored, they can check their staff handbook or contract to see if the employer is allowed to do this.</p>

<p>If they’re not, the worker might be able to resign and claim unfair (‘constructive’) dismissal. But this is a last resort - they should try to sort the problem out first, try to solve a workplace dispute.</p>

<p>For more information: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/monitoring-work-workers-rights" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gov.uk/monitoring-work-workers-rights</a></p>
