A UK employee has won more than £14,000 in compensation after an employment tribunal ruled that she was unfairly dismissed for shopping online during work hours, with the judge concluding that her employer had secretly installed spyware to monitor her activity without proper grounds or procedure. The case, Lanuszka v Accountancy MK Services Ltd, was reported by People Management and has quickly become a landmark example of how UK law governs workplace surveillance and employee privacy.
The claimant, Lanuszka, was dismissed after her employer recorded that she spent just over an hour browsing websites such as Amazon and Very over a two-day period. Her employer claimed this amounted to gross misconduct. However, the tribunal found that the company had secretly used spyware to track her computer usage and had failed to follow any fair disciplinary procedure or issue prior warnings.
