Over six and a half million of employees use internet during working hours for non-working purposes. Every month, each employee sets to navigation around 38 hours which is equal to, more or less, a week of work.
Among companies, there are some which do not set limits to surf the internet for their employees during working hours, some which recommend to connect only at lunch time or before the beginning of the turn, some which put up filters to block access to web sites that have nothing to deal with work.
However, companies that intend to limit and prevent any abuse have to deal with the guarantees contained in the Statute of Workers and in the Privacy Code.
Art. 4 of the Statute, in fact, does not allow the installation of “audiovisual equipment or other equipment” that allow remote control of employees, while the art. 8 and the Privacy Code safeguard the right of the employee not to reveal political opinions, religious affiliations or trade union opinions.
Use of the e-mail is even more protected than internet browsing: in principle, in fact, the contents of email messages, even if the exchange of e-mail is via personal business address, have remain secret unless should occur irregular usage of e-mail.
In this case, control is possible but should never constitute remote control of the work performance. Furthermore, the contents of the correspondence itself have to be not accessible.