Last week, the Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgericht) of Hanover/Germany (case no. 10 A 6199/20) ruled that the continuous and minute-by-minute recording of quantitative and qualitative performance data of employees at the Amazon logistics center in Winsen is permissible under data protection law. The court recognizes the company’s legitimate interest in collecting, storing, and evaluating data to control and optimize operations, as well as for the objective and fair evaluation of employees. The written judgment has not yet been published, but it will certainly be interesting to delve deeper into the reasoning of the decision.
It is now up to companies to use this freedom for the benefit of all involved. Leadership responsibility means building a positive and sustainable culture. When processes are improved based on analyses, reasons for inefficiencies are eliminated, planning becomes more reliable, and evaluations are made fairly, everyone benefits. However, a fair evaluation also requires the inclusion of all factors and is anything but trivial. It is a challenge for analysis in addition to a challenge for corporate culture.