Personal data on a work computer

[Bev250264]

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend and I hope someone can help.

 

She has run the uk office of a small Canadian business for the past 8 years. A few months ago, her boss started to hint that he wanted to close the UK office and since then has become increasingly difficult to deal with. As a result she has been worried that she was about to be made redundant. A couple of weeks ago and completely out of the blue, she had a visit from someone sent from the head office who came in accompanied by a solicitor, handed her a letter telling her she was suspended on full pay from her job pending investigation into gross misconduct and escorted from the building.

 

She is at a complete loss to understand what she is supposed to have done and the allegations in her letter are vague to say the least. Today she has been told that her office has been packed up and moved to a serviced office 150 miles away but as far as she is concerned she is still employed as she hasn't been told otherwise and to her knowledge, nothing has been found in her office to backup the allegations made against her.

 

As she was the only person who ran the office in the UK, she worked extremely long hours and it was basically an extension of her home. As a result, she kept alot of her personal files and information at her office including details to do with her mortgage and other financial matters as she was rarely at home to deal with such things. She was able to get her paper files on the day she was suspended but has not been allowed back in the office since and now that the office has been moved so far away, she feels she has effectively been dismissed. What is upsetting her more is that all her personal files held on her work computer have been removed but she doesn't know where to. As a result, she feels completely exposed as she doesn't know who has access to the computer and where it is being held.

 

Is her employer allowed to:

 

a) move her office 150 miles away effectively ending her employment before any evidence of her alleged misconduct has been found and she has been formally dismissed.

 

b) access her personal files even though they are held on her work pc

 

She is adamant that she has done nothing wrong and all this is making her quite ill.

 

She is seeking legal advice but in the meantime, any help to put her mind at rest would be much appreciated.

[Pusillanimous]

There is usually small print somewhere in company policies that the company owns the IT property and that they are allowed to monitor and retrieve any information on the hard drives. You need to ask HQ for their electronics policy in this matter. Under the DPA technically, she has a right to privacy. The major problem, though is arguing why she had matters such as her mortgage on the system that she has not got backed up elsewhere. There could be a policy against personal use, so care needed in what to admit to.

[stu007]

Hi

 

I think you need to speak to company HR and request a copy of their Electronic communications/IT Policy.

 

Have a look at this link for ACAS may be of use: www.acas.org.uk/

 

These PDFs from ACAS may help:

[renegadeimp]

It depends on the definition of "personal". If it relates to the job, then the employer can argue it is their property. Probably covered in the contract.

 

If it is actually personal, then they could ask why it was on a work related system.

[Bev250264]

It's slightly more complicated than that. The company is effectively a one man band with a UK office which my friend ran on her own. There is no HR, no line manager - nothing. The contract of employment she has is 3 A5 sheets which doesn't state anywhere about an IT policy. She has her personal information elsewhere but is concerned that the information held on her pc is now in the hands of goodness knows who. What has upset her more than anything is that she believed her boss to be a friend and she did many things for no payment in order to keep the office running smoothly and now she feels this has all been thrown back in her face. The reason she used her work computer to send letters etc was because she spent such long hours at work.

[steampowered]

I would sort out the dismissal before trying to get the information back. This is the more important issue.If it has been a few weeks already, she should perhaps write a formal letter asking what is going on. This sounds like a classic case of unfair dismissal, although it is difficult to advise without knowing what the allegations are.Do be very careful not to miss the deadlines for filing a claim in the ET for unfair dismissal - she has three months minus a day to file a claim and is unlikely to get an extension if she misses the deadline.

[Bev250264]

But she hasn't actually been dismissed yet so can she still file a claim? I know she has written a formal letter addressing the allegations and sent it to him and to his solicitor but had no reply as yet. Does the deadline run from the date of dismissal or the date of suspension? She's been to the doctors this morning as she is really struggling and he has given her a sick note for 3 weeks as he says she is suffering from stress. Will this have any type of bearing on the matter? I suspect not but wondered if it would show the emotional impact of the past couple of weeks on her.

 

Thanks everyone for your advice. Much appreciated.

[san_d]

It was silly of her to keep personal files on company's PCs. The employer shouldn't have deleted the files, should have made a backup. However it would have been difficult to claim the files back. Bottom line is, if you want to access your files from work, use some cloud service like Google drive or Amazon cloud.

[Bev250264]

It was silly of her to keep personal files on company's PCs. The employer shouldn't have deleted the files, should have made a backup. However it would have been difficult to claim the files back. Bottom line is, if you want to access your files from work, use some cloud service like Google drive or Amazon cloud.

 

She knows that now. I think the mistake she made was treating her boss as a friend and not an employer. The irony is she was in the process of moving everything over to icloud but was still getting to grips with it. If she can't get the files back she just wants to know that they have been deleted and her personal information isn't floating around. All such a mess and I fear will get messier as time goes on.