BuzbyTimeRead the requirements guide

The law, named by jurisdiction · 3.1

Notice, and what it has to contain

Notice, and what it has to contain. What decides it, what it costs, and what usually goes wrong. For a practical comparison point, see Monitask's employee performance logs.

Notice is not consentThe distinction

Two different things, frequently conflated. Notice tells somebody what is happening. Consent asks their permission, and in an employment relationship it is a weak basis almost everywhere, because it cannot be freely refused.

Most regimes that regulate workplace monitoring require notice and rest the lawfulness on purpose and proportionality rather than on a signature. Which means a policy somebody signed on their first day is not the protection it is generally believed to be. A useful outside reference is Harvard Business Review.

What a notice should contain

  • What is collected, specifically, rather than by category.
  • What is not collected, which is usually more reassuring.
  • Why, in terms of a purpose rather than a principle.
  • Who can see it, by role.
  • How long it is kept.
  • What it will not be used for.
  • How somebody sees what is held about them.

Seven items, one page, plain language. Where a lawyer reviews it, have it drafted plainly and reviewed for accuracy rather than drafted by review.

Timing

Before deployment. A notice issued after collection has begun is an announcement about something already happening, and in jurisdictions requiring prior information it may not satisfy the requirement at all.

Where consultation with employee representatives is required, that comes earlier still, and the entry on consultation covers it.

What the person sees

Everyone sees the notice before anything is recorded about them, and can see their own records at any time afterwards.

The notice is the same document for everybody, including managers.

Written and spoken

A document alone reads as a legal formality and produces the worst interpretation. A short meeting, with the document handed out afterwards and awkward questions answered honestly, produces a different result from the same content.

The awkward question is always whether this will be used against somebody. Answer it with what the policy actually permits rather than with reassurance.

The handbook problem

A general clause in an employee handbook, signed years ago, covering monitoring in the abstract, is what most organisations rely on. Whether it suffices for a specific new system depends on the jurisdiction and on how specific the clause was.

A fresh, specific notice costs an afternoon and removes the question. It is also the version that actually informs anybody, which was the point.

Contractors and visitors

People who are not employees are frequently missed. A contractor whose time is recorded, or an agency worker on a client system, needs the same notice, and the obligation may sit with you, with their employer, or with both.

Not advice

This entry describes the shape of a requirement that exists in many jurisdictions in different forms. It states no rule and should not be relied on. Take employment and data protection advice covering everywhere your people are, before deploying.

Who the notice goes to

Everybody whose data is recorded, which includes managers, directors and whoever runs the system. A notice addressed to staff and not to the people reading their data communicates something about the arrangement before anybody reads a word of it.

Reissuing it

Whenever what is collected changes, what it is used for changes, or who can see it changes. Not annually as a formality: on the change, because that is when somebody's expectation is being altered.

Keep the old versions with their dates. It is a small archive and it answers the question of what somebody was told at the time they were recorded.

Language

In whatever languages your people actually read. A notice in a language somebody works in but does not read comfortably has satisfied a form and informed nobody, and on a shop floor or in a call centre this is common.

What good notice buys you

Beyond compliance: fewer rumours, fewer assumptions that everything is being watched, and a document to point at when somebody asks. The entry on what monitoring does to people covers why the assumption is worse than the reality.

A template that is safe to start from

Not a legal template: a structure. Seven headings matching the seven items above, each answered in two sentences about your actual arrangement, then reviewed by somebody qualified.

Written that way round, the review is a check on accuracy rather than a drafting exercise, and the result is a document people read.

One test before issuing it

Give it to somebody who will be subject to it and ask what they think is being collected. If their answer differs from what the notice says, the notice has failed at the only thing it exists to do, and no amount of legal sufficiency fixes that.

The part people remember

Not the document. The meeting, and whether the awkward question was answered straight. Six months later nobody recalls a clause and everybody recalls whether they were told the truth.

Where the notice lives afterwards

Somewhere a person can find it without asking: alongside the system itself, in the induction pack, and on an internal page with its version date. A notice issued once by email has been issued to the people who were there that day.

One more audience

Candidates. Where a recruitment process mentions how time is recorded, or where somebody asks at interview, the honest answer given early is worth more than a notice on day one.

People who would find the arrangement intolerable are better off knowing before they accept, and so are you.

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