To Put In A Formal Complaint?

[SheDoneAlreadyDoneHadHerses]

My team has a policy (not sure if it's company-wide) of putting a forwarder on personal inboxes to a generic group box so no work is missed. I raised concerns about this in July, to be told that we shouldn't be receiving personal emails anyways.
Roll on to this week, where I've received an email from our HR team regarding a deduction to my salary, which has obviously been forwarded on and has been seen by my colleagues (one text me to tell me), there was then a glitch in the system so it appeared AGAIN, my boss was made aware, she panicked, moved it, replied to it, copied me in WHICH THEN SENT IT TO THE BLOODY TEAM INBOX AGAIN.

That's my personal fecking data!!! Albeit no figures are mentioned, it's still not an email I'd want half the team to see.

AIBU to go in tomorrow and raise holy hell? Are there any laws they've broken there?

That's not ok...I'd phone ACAS for advice. Surely it's a data protection issue?

Definitely not ok. You may not be receiving personal emails, but you may receive emails of a personal nature.

A formal complaint should be a last resort. Instead use this incident to add weight to your request that this email policy is reviewed.

What do you mean by 'a deduction to my salary'?

I'm guessing this isn't a regular deduction, more like a court order deduction or you wouldn't be so livid.

It was a days' unpaid leave, but it was in the email, plus it was asking for further details.

Again, something I'd not share with half the team.

I'm livid because if I wanted to discuss what HR are talking to me about, I'd like the option to do it myself instead of being made to forward on all my bloody emails and then having my own boss send it round again.

I couldn't get too get up about an email about upaid leave TBH.

I'd probably raise the point that it could have been much more confidential and they should rethink the forwarding policy, but a formal compliant is a bit excessive.

I'll put me guns back down then!

I think I'm as cross as I am because our boss is so bloody insistent that we are security minded and then this bloody happens.

Contact details for the information commissioner's office is here if you want to contact them to check on any possible breaches of data protection legislation.

If your boss is worried about work not getting completed, either set up a generic mail account for the team and allocate workload from that account or ask everyone to include other team members' contact details for urgent queries in your out of office reply.

Sorry, just re-read the OP. If you already have a generic account, put that in your out of office reply & ask the mailer to resend urgent queries there.

Thanks Rom I'll suggest that tomorrow.

Nydj, I'll have a look now :)

I'm livid because if I wanted to discuss what HR are talking to me about, I'd like the option to do it myself instead of being made to forward on all my bloody emails and then having my own boss send it round again

It really shouldn't be the case that emails to and from HR are read by more people than the intended recipient. I would contact ACAS to find out your exact position. I would then raise it as an issue, rather than put in a formal complaint. Point out that they should see this as a "learning opportunity" for them.

When I investigated a similar issue that I had, I was told by a data protection officer that there is a problem if recipients think they are contacting one person but actually as it turns out are contacting many. I'm prepared to be corrected on that but I do think it's worth finding out about. This time it was an issue with pay. What would it be next time? I have MH issues and whilst I'm quite open about them I wouldn't want everyone to know that I had had 3 days off with depression, which it seems could happen with your email system.

An out of office on your email advising people to email the generic email account in your absence and reminding them that no one is checking your email in your absence would suffice. Forwarding your email is totally unnecessary.
I've got the same thing whilst on mat leave, our payslips are sent to work email. Fortunately they agreed to send to my personal email for that reason

That's mad. As pp say, the normal solution is to have the team inbox on the out of office and make sure any automated emails reports etc are sent to it rather than personal email address.

You could be communicating with HR or your manager about all sorts that shouldn't be forwarded to the team. Occy health, grievances about other staff members, special measures etc.

We're similar to purplewhale at work, in that generally no-one forwards email while off, just have an out of office message stating to contact group email or phone xyz person if urgent.

We do get emails of a personal nature, eg HR, so no-one wants others to read that kind of stuff.

This is a really badly thought-out policy. It must mean that if people need to contact HR about, say, doctors' appointments or leave due to a family crisis, responses will be open to the entire department, probably with the original query in the email chain. If they can't find a way to exclude HR mails from the forwarding rule they clearly need to abandon the rule and, as purple says, deal with the work issue by out of office messages.

One consolation for you may be that this gives you the perfect opening to go to your team leader and HR and point out the dangers of the policy and suggest that it be reviewed urgently. If you have someone within the company responsible for data protection, involve them as well.