To not want my “well-being” discussed at work?

[Loverville]

Not just discussed, but minuted too!

New boss at work has changed the structure of the teams and instigated group feedback sessions, so everyone has to feedback on their direct line reports, grouped by grade. That means my manager also has to feedback on me in the session for my grade. Part of the feedback included talking about our line reports well-being.

What I didn’t realise is that there these sessions were being minuted by way of a form, to include everything discussed!

I was careful not to share too much about my line report, but others were very open. I have had a lot going on outside of work and I just feel so uneasy not knowing what my line manager has said about me and now it’s written on a PDF forever 😬

Ugh!

This is common in my workplace. An employees wellbeing is part of their overall supervision so anything discussed in relation to that is minuted in their record and then potentially fed on to my own supervisor during my supervision.
I think the key to this is knowing how much to disclose in the first place given that it could be minuted. But also, everyone being aware of what should be minuted and discussed. So I wouldn't necessarily record exact details of something someone told me, I might write a brief note saying something was discussed without the detail (but both of us would know what it was). I may also then not necessarily pass on all of the info during my own supervision depending on how relevant it was.
But it is pretty standard within my role that wellbeing would form part of those discussions and that anything of importance discussed during that would be recorded and then potentially fed back further up the chain.

Yanbu I would find this extremely intrusive. I'd be cagey in the short term and look for a better job in the medium term

That sounds like an absolute minefield. How is it justified- what's the purpose of sharing wellbeing information alongside performance info and sharing it more widely than is necessary for the purposes of managing the employee/risk?

We would never do this at work without anonymising.

So we might comment on trends - people are reporting stress around x, levels of mental health related absence are high, people have requested support with y.

We might raise a specific case for help, normally with HR, not normally naming names.

I'd have a chat with HR about this. It's not information which should be passed around. Lots of risk in noting it - confidentiality, duty of care etc. No obvious benefit - or is there? What's the purpose and where do the minutes go?

Yeah I do agree it is important for line managers to know, because outside of work things do spill into work and there’s no avoiding it.

I would just prefer it was kept my line manager and not shared with everyone and then written down!

But then I don’t even know if she would have said “Loverville had some things going on in her personal life” or “X, Y, Z happened to Loverville”.

It's sensitive and confidential personal data and they need to be extremely careful whom they are sharing it with and why.

Yes this could be a good route to raising a flag about it. Misuse of personal information

Meanwhile I wouldn't be sharing anything personal whatsoever with my line manager.

Sometimes we get anonymous feedback questionnaires (I know.. honestly, I cba with this place), I think we should be getting one soon so I’ll put it in then.

Which line of work is this?

It’s so frustrating because I only shared it with her recently too! I’m not particularly pally with her and when I talk about it I cry so I had to wait for a day I didn’t feel teary 😂

I think that's the bit you need to ask your line manager - you're well within your rights to ask how much of your info would be shared within those meetings and where that info is then stored. In my work, those records are private. So notes I write are stored and saved on a system that only myself and the employee have access to (and HR and my line manager if they really needed to) and the same goes for my own notes that would be recorded by my own supervisor. So any information wouldn't be widely shared with people, whereas it's not clear how much of your info is being shared within that group feedback session. You definitely need to clarify that!

Surely they are breaching GDPR by sharing this personal information (and potentially by collecting it in the first place, given that necessity and consent are a requirement for collecting personal information) especially if it is health related, in which case it falls into the area of special category data.