Can the boss read emails?

Employer vs. Employee interests in the email inbox

In our digital age, many operational processes are no longer recorded in paper form and a very large part of business communication takes place via email. Employers often need emails from their employees in order to track individual business transactions. There are also retention requirements for certain digital documents and an employer may also be interested in them have company emails from its employees in order to be able to uncover any behavior on the part of the employee that violates the contract.

Employees, on the other hand, generally have no interest in the employer tracking their private email correspondence. If a company email account is also used privately, conflicts of interest may arise. In many cases, this can be resolved by the employee sending relevant correspondence to their employer via email or by deleting his private emails and then giving his employer access to the mailbox granted. From a purely legal perspective, however, when an employer accesses an employee's mailbox, a distinction must be made between accounts with permitted and unauthorized private use.

Control of emails in the event of unauthorized private use of the account

In the event that an employer has not permitted its employee to use the company email account privately, the employer has quite extensive control powers with regard to emails. However, if the employee still uses this account privately, this constitutes an act in breach of contract. An employer can therefore definitely access an account for unauthorized private use. However, if he finds private messages when checking his e-mail, he has to discuss his business concerns weigh very carefully against the private interests of the employee, in accordance with the regulations of Federal Data Protection Act.

Control of emails when private use of the account is permitted

Controlling an email account becomes particularly difficult if private use has been permitted. The strict rules of the Telecommunications Act come into consideration here, but this is controversial among experts and courts. Data protection officers are of the opinion that in this case the employer is a provider Telecommunications service and therefore does not have access to the content of the employees' emails may provide. However, courts have already decided differently and weighed the interests of employer and employee against each other in individual cases.

Whether an employer is allowed to gain access to an employee's mailbox depends largely on whether the mailbox can also be used privately. In this case, it is still not clear what rights an employer is entitled to in individual cases. It is therefore recommended that employers do not allow the private use of company email accounts.