Will the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case change the way in which suspicions are investigated? The infamous liable case between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy has put England’s legal system on trial in the modern age of social media.
But what does this all have to do with HR and employment laws, you may ask?
The crux of the case, in short, is that Ms Vardy believes Ms Rooney set her up to prove she was leaking information to the Sun newspaper. Allegedly, fake information and the tracking of these ‘secrets’ were put in place by Ms Rooney to prove Ms Vardy was the ‘snitch’.
It can be tempting for employers to consider ways of enticing certain employees into an act, to catch them out. This is known as ‘entrapment’, which will be a consideration in the ‘Wagatha Christie’ case this month. This is an abuse of the process and will be frowned up by any Court where such evidence is put before them.
In employment law, like most walks of life, people hold very powerful human rights not to have their privacy violated by unfounded acts in an attempt to gain evidence. That said, employers can engage some means of covert surveillance if they are almost certain that a violation of their Human Rights is taking effect within their workplace.
Consider covert CCTV, focused solely upon the area where offences are being consider such a cash register in a shop. To hide surveillance tools, like voice recording, IT monitoring, vehicle tracking or covert surveillance without the workforce knowing will be useless in most investigations. If you have a company policy to have CCTV, vehicle trackers and IT monitoring then you could have the most compelling and reliable evidence to take into any disciplinary hearing.
Give us a call on 03456 122 144 to discuss this or any HR or employment law matter.