Employers must generally inform staff about any monitoring arrangements and proper consultation should take account of any objections that staff have to those arrangements. However, employers who can justify monitoring on the basis of a properly conducted impact assessment do not generally need the consent of individual workers.
Indeed, even if workers do freely give their consent, the employer should still conduct an objective impact assessment to be sure that the monitoring is necessary and justified and that any negative effects are outweighed by the benefits that the monitoring arrangements will bring. Consent is likely to be more relevant where an employer sets out to collect sensitive data through monitoring.
