The Good

For some businesses in industries such as financial services, call recording is a regulatory requirement. For others, you may want to use recording to provide a record of sale. And for many, you may simply be looking to monitor calls to enforce good practice and ensure that calls are professional and courteous.

The Bad

Equally, not all call recording is undertaken for good reason and unsurprisingly, the whole issue of what you can record, when and how you can do so, how recordings are stored and who can access them is highly regulated.

This means that it’s essential to ensure that your use of the my.plan call recording feature is lawful and that you manage your recordings an appropriate manner.

Disclaimer

This blog is not intended to provide you with legal advice. Rather, it merely provides some background information on the types of issues that arise in relation to call recording in general. The steps you need to take and the processes you will need to adopt will vary depending upon the circumstances in which you are intending to record calls.

The law

There are very strict legal rules governing:

• the circumstances in which it is permissible to monitor or record calls
• the purposes for which such monitoring or recording may be made
• the length of time recorded material may be retained
• most importantly of all, the need for pre notifications to those taking part in the call
• the manner in which such notification must be given

It’s essential that you obtain advice on these requirements from your own lawyers.

The interception, recording and monitoring of telephone calls is governed by a number of different pieces of UK legislation. The requirements of all relevant legislation must be complied with. However, the main ones on which you should seek to obtain advice are:

• Investigatory Powers Act 2016
• the Investigatory Powers (Interception by Businesses etc. for Monitoring and Record-keeping Purposes) Regulations 2018 (SI 2018/356) often referred to as the "Monitoring Regulation”
• Data Protection Act 2018 ("DPA")
• General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 ("GDPR")

Call monitoring and recording is a criminal offence under the Investigatory Powers Legislation unless it falls within one of the permitted practices, and all reasonable efforts are taken to inform individuals of the monitoring and recording.

Transparency

One of the most important principles to bear in mind is that in nearly all cases you need to tell people that their calls are about to be recorded.

This is relatively easy with your own employees, but less so with the people they are speaking to. This 'transparency' requirement is an important concept in relation to all of the regulations mentioned above. So, what do you need to tell people?

You will need to provide all callers with information on such things as:

• the circumstances in which monitoring may take place
• the nature of the monitoring
• how information obtained through monitoring will be used
• the safeguards in place for the users subject to the monitoring
• when information will be obtained
• why it is being obtained
• how this information will be used
• to whom it will be disclosed

GDPR

If the call recording includes personal data, which it almost certainly will, then under the DPA and GDPR you must have a lawful basis for processing. One lawful basis is consent of the participants, but this has to involve a positive action by the individual and not just continuing with the call.

Another is exercising the legitimate interests of a business, which involves undertaking a review exercise to ensure that the processing does not unduly prejudice the rights of individuals. The Information Commissioner's Office website provides guidance on the steps which you need to take and the records you need to keep.

Some steps you may wish to take

It is essential that you take all reasonable steps to notify those using your telephony system and making calls to you that all calls will be recorded. You should consider the need for the following:

• Playing automated verbal announcements that all calls are monitored and /or recorded (and why) on all incoming and outgoing calls before the individuals on the call are connected to each other. These announcements are easy to set up on the my.plan call recording feature
• Creating an internal Telephone Usage Policy to be provided to employees and contractors. Amongst other things this will set out that the phone system is a business asset and should be used only for business purposes. It will also make it clear that all calls will be monitored and /or recorded and set out the extent that staff and contractors are permitted to make personal calls.
• Updating your privacy policies to reflect that calls will be monitored and /or recorded
• Providing prominent internal notices on each phone and in each office space that calls will be recorded
• Managing access to live calls and the call recordings by having clear processes and policies dealing with such matters as:
• How and where the call recordings will be stored
• The circumstances when it will be permissible to access live calls or the call recordings
• The duration for which call recordings will be kept
• Who may access the live calls and recordings and the process for gaining such access
• How access to the call recordings will be logged
• The destruction of any recordings after the retention period has expired

The good news is that, other than ensuring the people involved in the call are informed that the call is being recorded, for many of these points, my.plan Call Recording has you covered. For example, the Call Recording feature automatically logs (audits) each user’s access to both the system and the individual recordings. It also provided set retention policies that automatically delete recordings after the retention period is met. It also meets regulatory requirements over the storage of call recordings. So, unless you download recordings and store them locally, the my.plan Call Recording system takes care of a lot of these issues.

In summary

We suggest that you think about and clearly set out:

• Why your business needs to record calls
• Who will have access to the recordings
• How you will systematically inform your employees and the people they are talking that calls are being recorded
• The changes to your policies that you need to make when it comes to your employees, customers and partners