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The company cannot even look at the employee's work emails unless there are already indications that the employee is acting in bad faith ("Anfangsverdacht").


That doesn’t seem true?

” According to the guidelines, if the use of the Internet and email services is only permitted for business purposes, the employer can check the Internet use of the employees randomly, to make sure that they use it for business purposes only.”

https://www.mondaq.com/germany/privacy-protection/496710/ger...


This is false for the general case. The employer always needs a reason, e.g. the employee appears to be browsing the internet the whole day instead of working. And even then, the work council has to be consulted.

The employer can look at work emails if it's the last resort (no other means to get the information), they have a reason (like if employee is sick and a customer emailed them directly with important contract data), a member of the work council is present, and it's been cleared by the GDPR person (whatever they're called in English).

Labor laws have been shaped by courts so it's quite confusing, even to Germans. Rulings are often decided by minuscule details that don't appear to be big but often are, so generalizing is hard.


I found this unproductive.

If a customer phone the support directly, are they going to hold the phone for hour waiting for approval? Only after the approval, the support can start reading the work email and decided the next step.

Co worker and manager need to aware of the work progress, just in case the employee is sick or something.

Employee should do their private work on their own devices.


The company can easily take measures to prevent situations like this by using a proper CRM solution. If the company didn't, it's its own fault. Flaws in internal processes don't legitimize surveillance.


It's also valuable to co-workers and managers to know if the employee might be engaging in behavior that could get them sick, or if they are looking for another job. So employers should really be able to monitor their employee's own devices, health records, and expenditures.


Does German law allow recording support helpdesk phone call?

What make email different from phone call?


The company can record phonecalls with customers as long as the customers agree, which is already being done under the disguise of "improving customer service". The company cannot record all phone calls an employee makes.

The company can simply require all customer communication to go through a proper CRM. This way there is no need to look into an employee's personal inbox.




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