10. Surveillance and monitoring

With the spread of digitisation, privacy laws are of growing importance in the workplace. As well as the human right to privacy under Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights and common law rights to confidentiality, the use and processing of personal data is regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. Data protection law is enforced by the Information Commissioner. There are separate laws governing telecommunications and computer misuse.

There is an Employment Practices Data Protection Code of Practice available from the Information Commissioner’s website, as well as a separate Code of Practice on CCTV, updated in 2015 to take account of other technical devices at work capable of processing and storing personal data, such as body cameras.