In recent years, also due to the pandemic, many organisations have switched to a full or partial remote work format. As a result, many organisations in Israel and abroad have started to use technological surveillance measures to monitor and track employee performance remotely. 

The draft guidance comprehensively examines the topic of remote work monitoring, the main privacy risks in such monitoring, and the relevant legal provisions. 

The privacy risks related to using technological means for remote work monitoring are many, also considering that, unlike employee monitoring in the workplace, it takes place, for the most part, in a person's home, posing a real challenge when it comes to protecting the privacy of employees and their family members and relatives. 

In general, privacy protection laws allow employers, with limitations, to use technological means to monitor employees when working remotely, but only in a reasonable and proportionate manner, for a legitimate purpose, and also to be related to the legitimate interests of the workplace. Moreover, the employer must inform the employee, detailing, in writing and in full transparency, how the monitoring will be carried out and how the information will be used, and receive the employee’s consent. The employer must refrain from collecting personal information if consent is not given. 

The employer must also ensure that information incidentally collected about the employee's family members (and other irrelevant persons) is not stored in its databases and refrain from using surveillance measures beyond the working hours in which the employee makes himself available to the employer.

Employers are required to check, at least once a year, whether it is necessary to continue storing the collected information.

Before the Authority publishes its legal and professional position on the subject, the public is invited to submit references and comments to the document before 22 January 2023.