Data protection issue or not

SeduLOUs

WorriedOrNot wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback just to give a bit more information I didn't circulate the hours I only emailed my new line manager who should already know who worked what hours but didn't.

So some the stuff she is claiming is a breach is your personal knowledge of working hours, not necessarily what was readily available?

Regardless, the fact you only sent it to your line manager still suggests to me that you are fine - your line manager is entitled to know the information, could readily access it if she so desired from other sources, and has a contractual obligation to keep it confidential.

As an example of the silliness of the accusation, if emailing your line manager information about your colleagues is a data protection breach, then that throws any whistle blowing policies out of the window doesn't it?

I'm pretty sure it hasn't got any legs to be honest. Definitely just sounds to me like the manager doesn't appreciate you 'poking your nose in' and possibly has misunderstood like a poster above that you were attempting to nominate people for redundancy...

Worth a sincere apology and some reassurance that you were trying to be helpful to the overall situation, and absolutely were not trying to suggest names to go under the bus.

FBaby

If it is available for everyone to see, then I would question whether the company might have breached some data protection rules themselves. I am not certain, but I think staff might be protected from everyone being able to know what their working conditions, including contracted working hours are.

Whether that is the case or not, it doesn't make sense as you describe it that they could accuse you of a breach, unless you emailed it to your boss's personal address, or someone else outside of the company.

agrinnall

While the number of hours that people are contracted to work may be confidential I can't see how the number that they actually work is, that's simply a matter of deduction from seeing who is there at what times (assuming all hours are worked on site). I think there is some sort of misunderstanding between you and your manager and when the two of you sit down you'll be able to work it out without any accusations of DPA breaches.

CalumHeath

sangie595 wrote: »

Why on earth did you need to circulate peoples working hours? Your boss is right - you should not have done it. Other peoples working hours, however you obtained the information, is none of your business, and certainly nothing at all to do with redundancy. I am reading this as you "nominating" other people for redundancy. Because why else would their working hours be relevant.?

I've got to say that this is one of the biggest over-reactions I've ever seen to anything on the MSE forums - and that's really saying something.

There's absolutely nothing wrong in drawing your boss's attention to freely-available information; OP, if it happened as you say it did you've done nothing wrong.