Employer breach of confidentiality/data protection??

[jni247]

Basically I feel my employers have breached confidentiality and/or Data Protection on several occasions over the past few months.

 

Occasion 1 – My employers requested a medical report from my GP due to an ongoing condition and my manager then turned up to my Attendance Hearing without it. It turned out she’d lost it somewhere in the office so anyone could have found it and read it. No apology or explanation as to where the document had went was ever offered.

 

Occasion 2 – After my manager got another copy of the medical report from HR, I had my hearing and they put me on an absence monitoring plan which is a document stating when I’d been off and why, what the trigger points were for the future, things that had been discussed in private meetings and extracts from the medical report. Last month I found 2 copies of this file on a shared computer drive, not password protected, that everybody who works there has access to. I had to approach the manager of the manager who had left it there to get it removed because she wasn’t in yet but came in later that day. I emailed the manager that had left it there and didn’t get a reply until 4 days later with a poor excuse about her thinking it was password protected, an insincere apology and “thanks for bringing it to her attention”.

 

Occasion 3 – Yesterday one of the senior managers sent out an email to the whole department (a mailing list of around 200-300 people) with the names of everybody who was absent that day and the reason why. My name was on this list. He attempted to recall the message but it had already been read by a number of employees and was still sitting in my own inbox this morning so obviously it wasn’t a completely successful recall. He did come and apologise for this but I just don’t feel it’s good enough after everything they’ve done to me over the past few months. I’ve never told anybody why I was absent as I consider that confidential and I don’t feel comfortable talking about it. Now because of my employers, lots of people know my private information.

 

Do I have any sort of case against them?

[Bigredbus]

Visit the ICO website:

 

www.ico.gov.uk

 

Read the third part of the Employment Practices Data Protection Code - Information about workers' health

[becky2585]

How long have you worked there?

 

There are no DPA related claims as you haven't suffered any financial loss. If you have over 12 months service you could resign and claim constructive dismissal claiming a breach of trust and confidence, but clearly you'd then be without a job!

[papasmurf1cx]

I agree with becky unless there is a loss you can show then the data protection route is cr*p.

 

Claiming CD is fraught

 

Best putting in grievances and showing that the company are making your life hell, of course the more you stir it up the the more it will tell on your health. Are you prepared for that?