A SENIOR lawyer from a Worcestershire firm has warned employers to be careful about monitoring emails.

Ashley Gurr, employment partner at Redditch firm Kerwoods, cautioned how developments such as the gig economy were blurring the lines between workplace and private life.

His comments followed a European Court of Human Rights judgment in a case where a Romanian engineer was sacked for conducting personal and private communications on an office account.

He claimed his employer had breached his right to a private life.

The company’s rules banned private use of online accounts, but the court found that Bogdan B?rbulescu had not been informed in advance about the monitoring.

Mr Gurr said: “There are circumstances where it can be necessary for workplace emails to be monitored.

“But this possibility needs to be clearly stated to staff so they are fully aware of the position,

“Given the growth of the gig economy, zero hours contracts, and other such changes, it is far less straight-forward as to whether somebody is on or off duty. It can be hard to make plans if you don’t know from one day to the next when you might be working.

“As a result, many people find they have little choice but to send on occasion a private email during work time.

“Employers need to be flexible. They can monitor such matters but need to be clear about why and what they are doing it for.

"Blanket bans and ‘spying on individuals simply for the sake of it’ could get them into a lot of trouble.”

The ECHR court in Strasbourg found by a majority of six judges to one in favour of B?rbulescu’s employers. But the Strasbourg appeal court later overturned this with an 11 to six vote in the grand chamber.