BYOD or the Use of Personal IT Devices in Employment Relationships

Risks and Safeguards for Private Life and Data Protection

Abstract

Telework, one of the most widely used flexible models of work organization, represents an instrument capable of facilitating the reconciliation of professional life with private and family life. Achieving this objective, however, requires a joint effort of the parties of the employment relationship, in which good faith and proportionality are essential pillars of the legal relationship. According to the obligations established by the relevant legislation, the employer provides the teleworker with the information and communication technology (ICT) means necessary for the performance of work under secure conditions, while also allowing, under the principle of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), the use of employee's own IT equipment. However, this right of the employee is not absolute, being limited not only by the employer's organizational prerogative, pursuant to which the conditions for the use of personal devices are established, but also by the employer's right of control and supervision, materialized through the monitoring of the devices used and even of electronic communications, a practice which should comply with the requirements imposed by national and European legislation. In the absence of adequate technical and legal safeguards, BYOD model risks transforming the employer's prerogative of control into a potential mechanism of excessive suveillance, incompatible with European standards on the protection of private life and personal data. In this context, the present study aims to analyse the implications of the use of employee's own devices with employment relationships, highlighting the permissible limits of employer intervention, the risk associated with this practice, as well as the necessary safeguards for preventing unjustified interference with the right to privacy and the right to the protection of personal data.