Business Mobile Phones Policy

This policy applies to mobile telephones provided by the organisation.

Work mobile telephones are provided at the discretion of the organisation on the basis of business need and must be returned to the organisation on the last day of your employment.

Work mobile telephones may be used for private calls. This must be kept to a minimum and all mobile phone bills are subject to a fair use policy.

The safeguarding of your work mobile telephone is your responsibility. Do not leave it in a visible place such as in an unattended car. Loss of a work mobile telephone should be reported to the Operations Director.

Mobile telephones may be used for private purposes during working hours, but such use must be kept to a minimum, be reasonable and in no way interfere with your work.

Be considerate in your use of your mobile telephone. Turn it off or onto silent mode when its use could be distracting, for example during meetings and training sessions.

Business mobiles should not be used to record video or take photos for non-business use.

Mobile Phones should not be used to:

Observe any restrictions imposed by SY Plus Limited on the use of mobile telephones, including requests to turn them off.

Drivers should concentrate on driving and avoid distractions. Answering and making telephone calls, sending text messages and accessing the internet are all distractions and in certain circumstances could amount to the offence of driving without care and attention or even dangerous driving.

It is a criminal offence to use a hand-held mobile telephone or similar device while driving. Use of hand-held mobile telephones while driving is permitted only in an emergency.

Any mobile telephone that is or must be held at any time while in use is a hand-held telephone. The use of an earpiece does not make a telephone hands free. To be hands free the telephone must be fixed or in a cradle.

All hand-held mobile telephones should be switched off/placed in silent mode and not answered until you reach your destination or have stopped in a safe place.

If the telephone or equipment is hands free you may operate from the steering wheel controls or via voice activation. However, SY Plus Limited would advise that any calls made or received should be undertaken when stationary.

The organisation monitors the use of its mobile telephones. Monitoring is in the organisation's legitimate interests and is for the purpose of ensuring that workers are using mobile telephones in accordance with this policy.

The data controller is [Gary Strickland-Smith].

The organisation will monitor the telephone numbers to which calls are made and from which calls are received, including by random checks of numbers that have been dialled, and the duration of calls, but will not monitor the content of telephone calls.

Monitoring will normally be conducted by the organisation's Line Managers. The information obtained through monitoring may be shared internally, including with members of the HR team, an employee's line manager, managers in the business area in which the employee works and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles. However, information would normally be shared in this way only if the organisation has reasonable grounds to believe that a work mobile telephone has been misused.

The information gathered through monitoring will be retained only long enough for any breach of this policy to come to light and for any investigation to be conducted. Data is held in line with SY Plus Limited retention policy a copy of which can be obtained from Compliance.

Information obtained through monitoring will not be disclosed to third parties (unless the organisation is under a duty to report matters to a regulatory authority or to a law enforcement agency).

Workers have a number of rights in relation to their data, including the right to make a subject access request and the right to have data rectified or erased in some circumstances. You can find further details of these rights and how to exercise them in the organisation's data protection policy If workers believe that the organisation has not complied with their data protection rights, they can complain to the Information Commissioner.

Breach of this policy will be treated as misconduct. Whether it is minor or gross misconduct will depend on the circumstances, but you should expect breach of the driving provisions to be gross misconduct.

If you have been issued with a mobile telephone, breach of the policy could result in its being withdrawn.