Work emails and DPA

Evilm

They should stay in his personnel file only I would have thought.

I'm not sure that if they did allow them to be seen by all and sundry in the office that your friend would be able to do anything about it though.

Are there more details so that we can look at the full picture?

SarEl

Uncertain wrote: »

I don't think so unless it was part of his job. As I understand it (and I think there is case law) if it wasn't part of his duties to produce that kind of IP then the employer doesn't own the IP even if it was (wrongly) produced in the employer's time. In other words the employer can't have it both ways......

There is a significant difference between intellectual property and this situation. An e-mail (or probably several e-mails, from the sounds of it) is not intellectual property, in the same way that your letter to your gran isn't. If you are very lucky, one day people may want to have the letter to your gran and pay good money for it (probably after you have written the best selling books ). But as has been pointed out, an e-mail sits on a computer and / or server which has people who are authorised to access it and its contents, and which belong to someone else. It's tantamount to leaving your letter on the desk - you can't then complain a lot that somebody read it! But in law the data on the server belongs to the employer - they have a legal responsibility for it. And that includes, as I said before, disclosing data if a SAR is made. So if, as has been suggested, he has made comments about named or identifiable individuals, they have a legal right to see that information if they ask, and the employer must comply. In the same way, if the employer wishes to view data on their server, or indeed, share that data with someone else, they may do so provided they are within the law. There is no part of the DPA which says that an individual owns data they create, or has any rights over it, if it is created on someone elses system. That is why, when a SAR is generated, an employer does not need to ask for the permission of the employee creating the data to disclose it.

crispy_chris

I'm not really sure how divulging the contents of the email would really benefit the discussion.

I managed to find my company's policy in regards to systems and communications. It seems to imply that all emails sent can be viewed by "HR, management & 'people who require access'". I presume people who require access would be internal fraud etc so I suspect my friend is in the clear in so much as (in the unlikely situation that anyone does read the emails) they can't divulge the information in them

Zazen999

crispy_chris wrote: »

I'm not really sure how divulging the contents of the email would really benefit the discussion.

I managed to find my company's policy in regards to systems and communications. It seems to imply that all emails sent can be viewed by "HR, management & 'people who require access'". I presume people who require access would be internal fraud etc so I suspect my friend is in the clear in so much as (in the unlikely situation that anyone does read the emails) they can't divulge the information in them

We don't want the details of the email; just what actually happened that you ended up on a forum asking for advice.