Shared information I shouldn't at work

[TinyChancer]

Posting here for traffic

I'm a union rep and accidentally attached the full minutes of our last meeting to my team, including managers, in which negative things were said.

I've recalled it, apologised and alerted the union of my mistake.

Only found out when I got an annoyed sounding email from a director.

It was not in anyway intentional but I'm totally panicking I'll be disciplined

I need people on here to help me calm down

Omg I don't need trouble before Xmas.

Been here 3 years if that's relevant.

It's a major breach. It could impact the outcome of whatever the case relates to. So I'd imagine you'd need further training or something. I know it was an honest mistake but not one that can really happen without consequence in your role.

Yes I think password protecting is one thing but sounds like you do need some training into how to manage meeting governance and the purpose of the minutes for that meeting. Eg. Why are they needed, what happens to them after the meeting etc etc. Also generally best to stick to facts and neutral language. In my experience no-one really wants “he said/she said” type minutes, they want something action focused as “Paulieswalnuts” above suggested.

A colleague who is mentioned in the minutes has accepted my apology andbeen really nice about it actually even though she's been named. She's confirmed the recall worked, thank god.

It wasn't me who wrote the minutes but I mistakingly shared the first draft (not the one that's meant to be edited for sharing). I've fed back the suggestion they be password protected going forward.

Okay, this doesn’t sound quite as bad. The only people management can be pissed off with are you and the other rep, who are named as criticising them. The way the minutes were taken protects your members by not naming them individually - that’s good practice. You really need to speak to someone from the Union asap; they may have a specific process to follow for this kind of breach.

But your union activities are not part of your job, so I can’t see that the company could legally sanction you for an error made while carrying out Union duties. You didn’t mess up at work; you messed up in your voluntary position as a union rep. The powers that be in your company may be annoyed, but my instinct is that they’d be on extremely dangerous ground if they did anything that could be seen as retaliation, since your error wasn’t an error in the work for which they pay you, iyswim. You have every right to discuss management attitudes to union concerns. It’s unfortunate that you made that discussion public, accidentally. But you haven’t revealed any wrongdoing or inappropriate expression of opinions, either by yourself or anyone else, so any retaliation for the contents of the document you shared would, in my opinion, be absolutely illegal. (I am not a lawyer, just a former union rep.)

Try not to panic. A calm response from you will help other people keep this in perspective. Be very clear about what has and has not happened: you have accidentally shared a document which attributes opinions to you and your union colleague; you have not identified any ordinary union members as the source of opinions about management.

You may need to send a response to the incident to your members. IMO, you should make these points:

• the minutes did not reveal any names of individual members who had spoken to union reps;
• concerns from various departments had already been shared with management, so the inclusion of these in the minutes revealed nothing that had not already been okayed for wider distribution;
• the only breach of information relating to named individuals was in sharing the assessment of management responses to concerns, which were attributed directly to you and your fellow rep;
• going forward, there needs to be a best practice plan for distributing minutes; this might include password protecting, or making the minutes available on request rather than sharing to all members on email by default, for example;
• ideally, measures in response to this incident should seek to ensure that the minutes never identify individuals, regardless of how the documents are distributed, since there is nothing to stop a member passing the minutes on to other colleagues, or printing them and leaving them lying around, etc. The distributed version of the minutes should therefore be redacted, removing any information that could potentially identify individuals (including, as in this case, union reps) as the source of opinions or of actions recorded in the minutes.

Good luck with it all!

I think pretty much everyone has done something similar at work, forwarded the wrong email on etc, there's likely to be some sympathy for you. Talk to your manager.

Having read your updates OP I don't think it's as serious as your initial panic told you it was. Sorry this happened, what an awful sinking feeling you must have had.

I think as you and others have said, it's a case of making it clear to your employer that you know it's a serious breach and you do take it seriously and will be accountable by making changes to ensure it can't happen again.

@MaterCogitaVera that's so helpful thank you, the panic is diminishing somewhat

I doubt there will be any disciplinary sanction of note however the bigger issue will be that your integrity and perceived competence will now be irrevocably tarnished with many of the employees. Mistake or not, I’d never trust you with anything confidential again.

There will also be those who are very much anti unions and this will be manna from heaven for them.

It's arguably not confidential. It's just sensitive. The two things aren't necessarily the same.

@PauliesWalnuts you've basically said the exact same as me 🤷‍♂️ could be, depends what’s in the document.

A GDPR governance manager once sent me and 800 other people an email on GDPR and the importance of it within the public sector, Que 200 people all emailing back, while also cc. Ing the 800 people back into the message, literally thousands of emails, bounce back, out of office etc. funny enough he wasn’t there much longer after that.

like I said before, it depends what’s in the document, it doesn’t sound so bad tbh.