Do you think that employers read microsoft teams chats?

[Larna4t]

I don't mean group chats , I mean 1-1 chats between employees. My colleague in my last workplace was absolutely convinced of it. She said that her boss would bring up things that she had said in 1-1 chats with colleagues.

Can workplaces access all team chats as it is a work communicatiom, even 1-1 chats?

Can they - yes
Do they - not unless they have reason to (well most decent companies will have to justify looking)

I’ve worked in IT for years and at some point was in the IT security team and have also been an admin for internal comms, such as teams, email etc. At first when asked to investigate an employee and read messages it was interesting (and I’m a nosey bugger), but you soon realise that people are generally boring and talk bollocks most of the day, so the novelty wore off quickly.

But as a PP said, it never ceases to amaze me that people still talk shit about their company and other people on work related equipment. Do what us IT folk do, and have a separate comms channel (such as WhatsApp on a personal phone) to moan about anything work related.

We really, really don’t want to catch people out. At my company the policies are clear, and I know this because I wrote them! If a DSAR is made, members of my team will go through everything relevant. Eg for the given dates, we will look at every email exchange, message on work phones (text and WhatsApp etc), every message in teams, get transcripts of every call made using a works device. It’s a pain in the backside, as we have to go through everything with a fine toothed comb, and redact anything we need to (based on legal requirements). It means we know a lot more about some colleagues than we would like (marital problems and affairs being just one thing that we end up reading about and having to keep a poker face on!) No one wants to do it, but legally we have no choice under certain circumstances. Read the internal data protection policy - not the external one!