Are managers allowed to watch you work?

[Redberriesonatree]

Posting on here to try and settle a debate about whether this is allowed or not! Googling it is giving mixed responses and we can’t find a straight answer either way.

Is a manager allowed to watch staff work on CCTV?

context: the work setting is retail and the CCTV is for preventing shoplifting I believe, although there are no signs but that is it’s main purpose. But recently it has been used to check staff productivity. I don’t mean retrospectively watching to check if staff are generally busy or not, the manager will sit in her office and watch staff working in real time and if anyone is caught not looking as if they are working hard enough she will immediately pull them up on it. It’s also on her phone so she watches from home and on her days off too.

is this allowed? Would you feel uncomfortable about this or would you feel like if you have nothing to hide then there’s nothing to feel uncomfortable about it?

we can’t settle our debate about whether this is ok or not! And if it’s legal or not? Google is making it even more confusing!

Sounds fine to me unless it was in locker room or toilets. You signed a contract to give your time up and work productively for the boss. She is checking you are upholding your end of the deal.

If you are genuinely working as you should be what is the problem?

There are actually laws and policies around this, and by the sounds of it your manager is breaching these.

This will help: https://sprintlaw.co.uk/articles/are-cameras-legal-in-the-workplace/#:~:text=Are%20Cameras%20Legal%20In%20The,Act%202012%20both%20apply%20here.

Did you post the correct link? It is about monitoring employees who work from home, not employees working in a retail shop?

I think you need a special licence to be able to watch live cctv. Security guards need it but I don't know much about it. Having it on her phone at home could also be dodgy. However as a manager myself I don't personally think it should be illegal as they are paying you to work and need to check you are. If you are aware you may be being monitored you would do the work you are paid for (not aiming this at you but there's alot of procrastination and also crime that goes undetected).

Prior to having kids, I was a Retail Manager and worked in a handful of different companies. It’s somewhat strange but it isn’t illegal at all. Our CCTV was in the Managers office so sometimes we’d just watch the CCTV monitor and see what everyone was doing on the shop floor.

I don’t understand why she has it linked to her phone as she’d also be able to watch customers on the monitor. I’d speak with your Assistant Store Manager if you don’t want to discuss it with the Area Manager and see what their thoughts are on it. I think it’s extremely OTT but it certainly isn’t legal to watch the monitor whilst she’s at work. At home and on her days off? Hmm I’m not so sure

Is a manager allowed to watch staff work on CCTV? Yes, they are but not obsessively and not as a tool to intimidate and create a hostile work environment.

the manager will sit in her office and watch staff working in real time and if anyone is caught not looking as if they are working hard enough she will immediately pull them up on it. It’s also on her phone so she watches from home and on her days off too. This is concerning as it sounds like she has no actual work of her own to do? She should definitely not be monitoring you on her days off/outside her working hours.

I would have a conversation with HR not about her monitoring you but about
-her reaction is to pull up anyone she thinks doesn’t look busy rather than to look at reasons why the shop just might not be busy then so she needs management training as she’s creating a hostile work environment.

-she monitors employees on her days off when another manager is in charge, how is this even acceptable? You can’t be supervised by more than one manager simultaneously by one at the shop and one at home watching you on their phone.

I don’t know whether it’s legal, I expect it is to a degree. My managers have used cctv to check on non theft related issues, not obsessively like this though.

But yours is a shit manager. She wouldn’t last long where I work as the manager above her would be furious she was wasting her time doing this rather than be out on the shop floor managing her team properly. Shit managers come and go but good, reliable staff are valuable and a decent manager knows that.

I’d be surprised if she’s legally allowed to watch the cctv on her phone outside of work
hours btw. That sounds like a data breach as the footage belongs to the company she works for and isn’t for her personal use, but willing to admit I might be wrong about that.

I have a manager like this. Watches staff then exactly like you said calls them up on it even if they wasn't doing anything remotely wrong. It's not allowed to this extent the cctv isn't there to stalk employees every move

Whether or not they can do it legally if someone did this to me I imagine I’d be gone quite quickly sounds toxic.

Well obviously it would be illegal to watch staff in a canteen or rest room , but why on earth would it be wrong to watch staff at work on the "shop floor"?

When I worked in an office anyone could see what I was doing as it was open plan.

When I was a manager I could see what staff were doing - and I would get up and walk towards them if I thought they were skiving (in fact it was good practice to wander about every so often for a few minutes to keep them on their toes).

Going back a number of years now so maybe things have changed.

We had a very similar set up in a retail store that I worked in previously although I was the manager and only had access to the CCTV when in the store. The business owners could watch our store on their monitor at head office and could log in remotely on their phones. No idea the legalities of the manager accessing the footage outside of working hours.

It was often quite handy though. If the shop was particularly busy and I suspected someone was shoplifting or had shoplifted I could phone/text the owners and ask them to watch/search the CCTV while I was busy dealing with the other customers.

It was also handy when money started going missing from our till & we couldn’t pinpoint when it was going missing. They just happened to be logged in one day and watched a member of my staff hide money while they watched 🙄🙃 so that solved that issue!

Surely it's not legal to have it on her personal phone and watch at home?! That would be a GDPR breach.

I do not see the problem personally. Staff are being paid to be productive and working and perhaps targets are not being met, tasks not completed etc because some staff are slacking off or chatting too much to colleagues. Anyone doing their job properly has nothing to fear. Ultimately she is responsible for the overall store success so makes sense she would want to see that jobs are being done properly by the staff who are after all paid to do them!

Yes they can and do.
Do you by any chance work at the Big Orange Funhouse? 😉

M&S used to use them to zoom in and out on the cashiers to check there was no funny business going on or if a persons till was regularly down!

Why would this be illegal or not allowed?

Maybe it’s a work phone? I still think she shouldn’t be watching when not on the clock.

Absolutely! It's creepy and unnecessary.
Hasn't she got a life?!

As someone who has worked in retail for over 20 years, your manager sounds like a typical store manager, married to her job with absolutely no life outside work.

I have to wonder is her position even necessary if all she does is watch employees on the shop floor? What actual work does she produce? I was a shop manager eons ago and the only time I monitored the staff was while I was on the floor. And that was usually in the course of training them, checking they were doing ok, seeing if they needed anything, or to help out if they got rushed. I was much too busy doing accounts, reports, balancing inventory, ordering seasonal stuff, planning ahead, doing supervisory reviews and personnel stuff in the back office to be just sitting there, eating popcorn and watching the staff do their jobs on the CCTV.

Yes it's legal. There are some steps they need to take like putting it in the privacy policy, having a Subject Access Request process in place and meeting it, but yes they can do this.

Re using her mobile phone, I'd be surprised if your info sec team/DPO are OK with that, but again, it's not actually illegal, just risky and foolish. At the very least the company should have a BYOD policy in place that sets requirements for the personal device having a decent password/biometric lock, firewall, AntiVirus etc installed for security.

Yep! The article deals with both scenarios.

There needs to be a raft of policies and procedures and the employer needs to be registered with the ICO. There needs to be a single use for the camera (security/theft prevention) and it can't be to just watch your employees. There needs to be a full staff induction and I very much doubt that the ICO (who can issue very large fines) would be happy about a manager watching staff off-hours from a personal phone. The data protection act does cover these areas.