Can I record a meeting without telling the other person?

pinksleepybear

Hi,

Is it illegal to record a conversation with someone if they are not aware it's being recorded? I have a meeting this afternoon with a senior manager with regards to a challenge I made to my mid-year review.

One of my colleagues had a meeting with him last week in which he agreed that what he was doing was against our HR policy, but gave her a Hobson's choice to accept it, or if she takes the issue to the HR department as she should, he would then give her a poor review at the end of year. My colleague came out of the meeting in tears.

This manager has now set up a meeting with me this afternoon, from my previous experience of him, I know him to be a bully. I believe he may try something similar, but I also think it would look heavy-handed of me to take my union rep to this meeting. If I recorded him threatening me, would I be able to take this to my HR rep, or would it be more of an issue for them that I made the recording in the first place?

Meeting is this afternoon, so I would appreciate any quick responses.

Thanks

Mister_aaa

Can't you ask for a representative from HR to be present?

maninthestreet

Take your Union Rep with you - this will, hopefully, prevent you manager doing the same thing to you that he did with your work colleague. Personally, he needs reporting to your HR department who, if they are worth their salt, will come down in him like a ton of bricks.

pinksleepybear

Thanks for your replies, I didn't want to write a really long initial post, but I guess I've left out some relevant information.

This isn't supposed to be the 'official' meeting about my challenge - the one in which he reviews my appeal and to which I will definitely take my union rep. The appointment reads,

'This is to clarify for me the challenges you've raised, clarify process and see where we go. This isn't a formal appeal meeting'.

It's only a 30 minute appointment and as he's already said it's informal, I think it might be overkill to bring my rep. I'm already aware of the process (I was given a copy by my manager) and this meeting isn't one of the steps on it. So I thought that if I record it, I could be covering my a$$ without looking like I'm being hyper-aggressive.

weezl74

sadly I don't think you can record the meeting without him knowing.

Could you take a pen and paper in with you and when he says any difficult statements just write them down. Hopefully this will give him a wakeup call, but if he challenges you doing this, you could maybe say something like 'I don't want to come out of our meeting with the wrong end of the stick, so I'm just going to write down important things you say if that's ok?' and then follow up with an email, saying, 'just to confirm, in our meeting of earlier, you said xxxxx' then you'll have written proof if you need to take it further?

Just a thought!

as0ta

pinksleepybear wrote: »

Hi,

Is it illegal to record a conversation with someone if they are not aware it's being recorded? I have a meeting this afternoon with a senior manager with regards to a challenge I made to my mid-year review.

One of my colleagues had a meeting with him last week in which he agreed that what he was doing was against our HR policy, but gave her a Hobson's choice to accept it, or if she takes the issue to the HR department as she should, he would then give her a poor review at the end of year. My colleague came out of the meeting in tears.

This manager has now set up a meeting with me this afternoon, from my previous experience of him, I know him to be a bully. I believe he may try something similar, but I also think it would look heavy-handed of me to take my union rep to this meeting. If I recorded him threatening me, would I be able to take this to my HR rep, or would it be more of an issue for them that I made the recording in the first place?

Meeting is this afternoon, so I would appreciate any quick responses.

Thanks

After reading that, If he's a threatening bully, I'd say record it without him knowing as backup, should you need it.

You might not beable to use it but make notes in your meeting and you can always go back and fill in the bits you missed out. Whose he to say that you can't make good notes if it came to anything. But importantly, it will be there as backup should it get nasty.

Any

as0ta wrote: »

After reading that, If he's a threatening bully, I'd say record it without him knowing as backup, should you need it.

You might not beable to use it but make notes in your meeting and you can always go back and fill in the bits you missed out. Whose he to say that you can't make good notes if it came to anything. But importantly, it will be there as backup should it get nasty.

TBF - I agree. It might not be allowed to be presented at courts (I watch too much TV:rotfl:), but you only need it as a back up for your HR who surely must do something even if they are not able to use it as official tool - but it will open their eyes about the person.

pinkshoes

I believe you're perfectly entitled to record the conversation, but would not be allowed to do anything with it unless you notified him before hand that he was being recorded.

I would go ahead and record it anyway, just in case.

If he does the same, you could notify HR that he's blackmailling you, and tell them you did record the conversation, so have proof, but can't play it to them as you didn't request his permission to record the conversation. You might be able to play it to them "off the record" though...

as0ta

Any wrote: »

TBF - I agree. It might not be allowed to be presented at courts (I watch too much TV:rotfl:), but you only need it as a back up for your HR who surely must do something even if they are not able to use it as official tool - but it will open their eyes about the person.

Precisely!

Any wrote: »

TBF - I agree. It might not be allowed to be presented at courts (I watch too much TV:rotfl:)

I know what you mean :rotfl:;)

juliescot

How would you plan to do it and what would be your reaction if he found out during the meeting?

pinksleepybear

Thanks everyone for your replies - I've just been out to argos and bought a dictaphone, which I will put in my handbag and take to the meeting.

It is however the world's most complicated machine with nonsensical instructions (and I'm a techie).