The legality of “forcing” or requiring employees to download apps to their personal devices varies greatly by country or specific location and jurisdiction and can also depend on the details of the app and the job the person does.
In some places an employer can only require you to download an app if it is written into your hiring paperwork and in others they cannot at all. In other places they can force you but must pay you certain reimbursements for data etc, and in others they can ask you to download reasonable apps or even any apps they want.
In other words, it is prudent to know your specific laws as pertain to you before standing against an employer on this issue unless you are willing to risk your job.
What is often done to avoid legal complications is to not force employee at all but coerce them. Generally this is legal with some exceptions provided it is reasonable.
So as an example, say you have your personal phone set up so you can do work tasks- maybe you like to take long lunches or pop out of the house to drop the kids off at daycare or whatever else and you want to be able to check your messages or emails or take meetings, or maybe you like being able to see your calendar and other employee calendars when you’re away from work to check the schedule to make decisions or plan or see if you forgot anything-
The company wants employees to download a new vpn or launcher to their devices but you say “no way.” Instead of “forcing you,” they might simply forbid accessing company data from outside the app or set up their servers to not allow access to their data off the app. They haven’t told you that you must do those things off the clock and away from your desk so they have no obligation to provide you a device. They are just saying that people who want to do those things must download the app.
Likewise they will often do things like institute “multi factor authentication” and have one method be to authenticate through a means that can only be done from your desk.
They didn’t say you couldn’t work remotely, but anyone wanting to work remotely would need to download their app because the only way to log in is to authenticate either from your desk or via the app.
For full time remote workers and those with remote work promised in contracts, you can simply change the security software you use. If your server side software makes it impossible to log in without the app, they need the app to do their job. If you’ve already supplied the hardware then they have no means to really resist that and if they started out using their own hardware then you likely had them agree to certain terms including provisions that they agree that by using their own hardware they will comply with any updated security policies and stay up to date with your standards and practices. In most places that
is sufficient to avoid being illegal.
The key is in giving the employee a choice but making one choice obviously the one to take because the other is just not good from their perspective or makes it impossible to do their job effectively as they normally would.
Of course there are levels to these things. Almost anywhere with “at will” type employment laws can simply fire you for almost any reason save for any prohibited reasons such as common ones like race or sex or retaliation.
So even where you are legally protected, refusing to comply could cause issues for you because unless your employer is dumb enough to say “we are firing you for not downloading an app..” or they make it super obvious- they could find or create any number if performance or business reasons to fire you or demote you or lessen your prospects.
Here is a real example I saw at a company I worked for that was legal or mostly legal at the time:
Employees used a manual time punch, you placed a paper card into a clock that stamped the time and date onto the card in the spot you positioned under slot.
This method was full of problems.
Employees could and (few) did cheat the clock. All sorts of ways to cheat it but one example is that you’d cover the half of the sheet with the dates using a sheet of paper or something when punching it. You’d punch one “perfect day” of times all on the same day for the entire time card. You then remove the paper and position it on the time side and stamp the date each day in the date side and at the end of period you have a time card with perfect punches, you came in on time and left on time and took your breaks on time every day and were never absent. If you actually did keep that schedule it was convenient and true, but just as easily and more often it was a cheat.
Come in late or leave early, take “long lunches” or miss your breaks (if employees did not take their mandated breaks and did not take them within certain rules like no later than X hours after or earlier than X hours before the end of shift” based on shift times etc- the company could be fined or sued.
If you didn’t show up and no one noticed or could prove it you had a punch showing you there.
Employees would also sometimes use it to work when they weren’t supposed to. The company liked to track and judge on efficient and other metrics so the technical employees often wanted to get more
Work done than was practical within their work day. Hourly and contract employees working over the allotted hours meant premium wages and the company had discretion to authorize those.
In short- if your boss gives you what is supposed to
Be in their mind 8 hours worth of work but you constantly need 10 to finish it, they can get a perception you aren’t very good at your job or how to manage time.
That can mean missed promotions, missed opportunities, even discipline or being let go to try and find more efficient workers.
So like- if you have 5 things to do and your boss thinks those 5 things should take 8 hours but you take 10 to finish them, when a cool project or predictive project comes up even if it is 1-2 hours work, your boss isn’t likely to give it to
You- you already can’t do the work you are supposed to do within your day so giving you more seems bad for you and the company. You’ll be seen as not being able to handle it. So some workers would hide their overtime and not get paid for it just to avoid the potential negative career impact.
The problem being that if you’re working and you aren’t on the clock the company can be in violation for labor laws even though they never gave the on. It’s also the case that their insurance may not cover you or the property or equipment if anything goes wrong while you are working off the clock as you technically aren’t an employee
and technically you aren’t performing a job function. So for various legal reasons and to track performance and get insight into periplos capabilities, accurate time tracking was a a key tool which time cards didn’t protect t enough.
Then there were mistakes. People accidentally punching over or forgetting to punch etc. the justification was enough for them to switch to a computer based time tracking system.
The system was designed so that you could download a phone app that had automatic time tracking features with manual log edits. Otherwise you had to use your work computer to log time manually. Technicians work had them moving around locations and within the technical building itself. They were often very busy and when and if they were working with their terminals near by it was usually because they were using the terminal to complete their tasks. Manual time logging required them to run a specific program and
In some places an employer can only require you to download an app if it is written into your hiring paperwork and in others they cannot at all. In other places they can force you but must pay you certain reimbursements for data etc, and in others they can ask you to download reasonable apps or even any apps they want.
In other words, it is prudent to know your specific laws as pertain to you before standing against an employer on this issue unless you are willing to risk your job.
What is often done to avoid legal complications is to not force employee at all but coerce them. Generally this is legal with some exceptions provided it is reasonable.
The company wants employees to download a new vpn or launcher to their devices but you say “no way.” Instead of “forcing you,” they might simply forbid accessing company data from outside the app or set up their servers to not allow access to their data off the app. They haven’t told you that you must do those things off the clock and away from your desk so they have no obligation to provide you a device. They are just saying that people who want to do those things must download the app.
They didn’t say you couldn’t work remotely, but anyone wanting to work remotely would need to download their app because the only way to log in is to authenticate either from your desk or via the app.
For full time remote workers and those with remote work promised in contracts, you can simply change the security software you use. If your server side software makes it impossible to log in without the app, they need the app to do their job. If you’ve already supplied the hardware then they have no means to really resist that and if they started out using their own hardware then you likely had them agree to certain terms including provisions that they agree that by using their own hardware they will comply with any updated security policies and stay up to date with your standards and practices. In most places that
The key is in giving the employee a choice but making one choice obviously the one to take because the other is just not good from their perspective or makes it impossible to do their job effectively as they normally would.
Of course there are levels to these things. Almost anywhere with “at will” type employment laws can simply fire you for almost any reason save for any prohibited reasons such as common ones like race or sex or retaliation.
So even where you are legally protected, refusing to comply could cause issues for you because unless your employer is dumb enough to say “we are firing you for not downloading an app..” or they make it super obvious- they could find or create any number if performance or business reasons to fire you or demote you or lessen your prospects.
Employees used a manual time punch, you placed a paper card into a clock that stamped the time and date onto the card in the spot you positioned under slot.
This method was full of problems.
Employees could and (few) did cheat the clock. All sorts of ways to cheat it but one example is that you’d cover the half of the sheet with the dates using a sheet of paper or something when punching it. You’d punch one “perfect day” of times all on the same day for the entire time card. You then remove the paper and position it on the time side and stamp the date each day in the date side and at the end of period you have a time card with perfect punches, you came in on time and left on time and took your breaks on time every day and were never absent. If you actually did keep that schedule it was convenient and true, but just as easily and more often it was a cheat.
If you didn’t show up and no one noticed or could prove it you had a punch showing you there.
Employees would also sometimes use it to work when they weren’t supposed to. The company liked to track and judge on efficient and other metrics so the technical employees often wanted to get more
Work done than was practical within their work day. Hourly and contract employees working over the allotted hours meant premium wages and the company had discretion to authorize those.
In short- if your boss gives you what is supposed to
Be in their mind 8 hours worth of work but you constantly need 10 to finish it, they can get a perception you aren’t very good at your job or how to manage time.
So like- if you have 5 things to do and your boss thinks those 5 things should take 8 hours but you take 10 to finish them, when a cool project or predictive project comes up even if it is 1-2 hours work, your boss isn’t likely to give it to
You- you already can’t do the work you are supposed to do within your day so giving you more seems bad for you and the company. You’ll be seen as not being able to handle it. So some workers would hide their overtime and not get paid for it just to avoid the potential negative career impact.
The problem being that if you’re working and you aren’t on the clock the company can be in violation for labor laws even though they never gave the on. It’s also the case that their insurance may not cover you or the property or equipment if anything goes wrong while you are working off the clock as you technically aren’t an employee
Then there were mistakes. People accidentally punching over or forgetting to punch etc. the justification was enough for them to switch to a computer based time tracking system.
The system was designed so that you could download a phone app that had automatic time tracking features with manual log edits. Otherwise you had to use your work computer to log time manually. Technicians work had them moving around locations and within the technical building itself. They were often very busy and when and if they were working with their terminals near by it was usually because they were using the terminal to complete their tasks. Manual time logging required them to run a specific program and