Rather than being seen as giving employers the right to snoop on their employee’s private correspondence, a recent judgment by the European Court of Human Rights should be considered as an eye-opener.

A Romanian engineer was fired after he used his company instant messaging system for private chats. The company, which implemented a ‘zero tolerance’ policy with regard to private communications, accused him of communicating with his fiancée and his brother. It produced transcripts to prove it.

Six of the seven European Court judges hearing the case agreed that the employer was entitled to monitor the communications in question “within the framework of disciplinary proceedings” and that doing so was not a breach of the worker’s right to a private life. They also felt a fair balance had been struck between the engineer’s right to respect for his private life and his employer’s interests.

So this was not a case of giving employers a blanket right to monitor workers’ online messages. But it did raise questions, many of which were put by the seventh, dissenting judge.

The first point is whether employers have a right to impose a blanket ban on personal use of the internet (or phones, for that matter). It is easy to argue this is the only way an employer can ensure an employee gives a full working day. Thankfully, employer/employee relations have evolved well beyond such a myopic way of viewing productivity.

A ban on private communications seems hopelessly archaic in a world where companies are doing away with rigid working hours, offering flexitime and when the social media play such a crucial role even in daily commercial operations. True, this would seem more relevant in the services sector than in manufacturing and retail but we all know tablets and smartphones have become very affordable and used by the big majority for long periods of time.

This ties up to another point: the boundary between working time and private time in a world where devices – whether personal or company owned – effectively keep employees in almost constant contact with work, whether they want it or not.

What certainly emerges very clearly from the European Court judgment is that if a company is planning to maintain control on the use of the social media by its staff – to whatever degree – it would definitely need to have a clear policy explaining not only what is allowed and what is banned but also how it will deal with infringements and disciplinary action.

In the Romanian engineer’s case, the European Court noted the dismissal was not based either on the content of the communications or their disclosure but rather, on the fact that there had been improper use of company property. The Yahoo Messenger account he had set up was meant to be used for responding to clients’ enquiries.

An EU working document on the surveillance of electronic communications in the workplace warns that a blanket ban on personal use of the internet by employees “does not appear to be reasonable and fails to reflect the degree to which the internet can assist employees in their daily lives”.

The bottom line is, we should not rush when deciding on the use of internet at the workplace.