Do your staff use WhatsApp for work communications?

According to recent legal analysis, there has been a threefold increase in employment tribunals reviewing WhatsApp messages as evidence.

Where the use of WhatsApp is endorsed or encouraged by employers as a means of business communication, the general rule is that the contents of these conversations would be treated in the same way as emails and could be disclosable both to a tribunal or as part of a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR).

Employers can be held vicariously liable for the content of their employees’ messages, for example, if the messages are of a discriminatory nature. In one case, a tribunal made an award of nearly £25,000 after an employee discovered a WhatsApp group where she and a colleague were racially abused.

Banning the use of WhatsApp at work is likely impractical; therefore, employers should provide staff with training on the use of WhatsApp, including what is acceptable and the fact that messages, on work group chats for example, could be disclosable.