WhatsApp blurs the line between work and private life
Since WhatsApp has been expanded to include features such as sending documents and has thus become more interesting for companies, more and more employers are integrating the popular messenger app into their everyday business as a widely used tool, as chip.de reports. But although the update now also makes WhatsApp suitable for use in operational processes, the whole thing also has a downside. Because the fact that documents can be sent via the app also means that supervisors can easily send work documents to their employees via cell phone at any time. The use of WhatsApp thus contributes significantly to the trend towards employees being available at all times.
Oliver Suchy from the German Federation of Trade Unions told Focus Online that he would advise against exposing yourself to constant availability via communication channels such as WhatsApp. According to Suchy, employees should think carefully about the extent to which they are willing to communicate digitally with their superiors and colleagues. According to him, the development is already going so that more and more employees have to be available in the evenings and weekends and that availability is being expanded more and more.
Do you have the right not to be available?
When an employee has to be available at a company and when not, this is primarily regulated by the labor law and specific collective agreements and company agreements. This also includes the communication channels via which the employees must be reachable, i.e. WhatsApp and the like. The decisive factor is that the compulsion to be available is limited to the agreed working hours, since, according to Bird & Bird, there is no legal obligation to be available to employees “around the clock” under German law. The service trade union ver.di told Focus Online that constant availability and even free work in free time were on the rise anyway. The use of a tool like WhatsApp in a company has the potential to significantly reinforce this development.
Thomas Weschle / Editor finanzen.net
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