In Austria, around one in five employees owns a company mobile phone. Naturally, questions arise when the boss provides an employee with a company mobile phone. Are you allowed to make private phone calls? Is the boss allowed to check the contents of the smartphone – such as text messages or apps? It is important that agreements are made in advance, which the employee must, of course, adhere to. If, for example, private use has been prohibited, the employer may also check at any time whether the employee is complying with this. Michael Eckert, a labor lawyer, knows that the boss is also allowed to check "connection records, email traffic, and visited websites" if private use was prohibited in advance. If the employee is allowed to use the company mobile phone for private purposes, the employer may not carry out any checks.
The company mobile phone – a curse or a blessing?
Disputes arise time and again when an employee makes a call on their company mobile phone, but the person on the other end is not a business partner, but their partner, who just wants to know when they should prepare dinner. To avoid any potential discussions, the rules set by the employer should be recorded in writing. If private use is therefore prohibited in writing, and the employee does not adhere to this and repeatedly talks to their girlfriend/boyfriend, this behavior will naturally have consequences. On the one hand, the employee faces a warning, and on the other hand, they can even be dismissed. A court has already ruled against an employee who used their company mobile phone while on vacation and made more than 100 private calls. These calls subsequently cost the employee their job.
It also becomes problematic if private calls, which may have been prohibited, are made during working hours. Strictly speaking, these are two violations at once: the employee is using the company mobile phone for private calls and is therefore also taking an unauthorized break – private posts on Facebook and Twitter made via the company mobile phone can also be the employee's undoing. Of course, it should also be discussed in advance which apps may be used. If the supervisor allows private use, that does not mean that all apps or additional services may be installed (or canceled). Even WhatsApp, the popular messenger service, is not automatically allowed just because the company mobile phone can also be used privately. WhatsApp forwards the numbers of all saved contacts directly to the company. This means that there is a legal violation here – the employee can therefore be warned because they are violating data protection laws. To be able to use WhatsApp on the company mobile phone, they would have to obtain the consent of all contacts saved in the phone book in advance.
Can a company mobile phone also be refused?
Anyone who thinks they don't want a company mobile phone at all cannot simply refuse it. The employer can demand that the employee use the company mobile phone so that they are reachable even when they are at a client meeting. The company mobile phone can then be switched off during the lunch break or after work. But while many employees are annoyed because they have received a company mobile phone and now have to follow numerous rules and regulations, many other employees are disappointed because they were not provided with a company mobile phone. The fact is that there is no entitlement to one. If colleague XY has a company mobile phone, colleague AB does not necessarily have to receive one too. In the end, it is still the supervisor who decides who gets a company mobile phone and who must be reachable via their private phone.
