To refuse to provide bank statement to my work to prove I was in the office

[HanExplorer]

I’ve found myself in a very unusual situation and am standing firm so far despite pressure.

I work in a hybrid role with a requirement to attend our office twice a week, this is measured monthly based on card swipe data. On one of the days in May, I forgot my pass so was issued a temporary one to use that day.

Earlier this month my manager flagged I was showing a day short for office attendance in May and said I’d need to make up a further day in June. I looked at the dates they had on record and quickly realised the missing one was when I had the temporary pass so that obviously hadn’t registered on the system.

I explained this to my manager and she still maintained I’d need to attend an extra day to balance the totals on the system as there ‘wasn’t any record of me attending’.

I realised I’d spent money in the on site restaurant that day and there’d be a record on my bank showing the company name. I screenshotted this on my phone, cropped it so you could see the date and sent it to my manager.

She has checked with her manager and told me that I need to provide a copy of a bank statement which shows my name and the transaction - that would of course also show all my other activity!!

This has been dragging on and I’m standing firm so far, but I’ve had a call booked in with my manager and her manager for tomorrow and I’m wary of what they are going to say.

My office is over an hours train journey each way so not a case of driving 5 minutes down the road to work a further day - regardless, I don’t feel I should do out of principle.

Yes this. Horrible to have to work somewhere with no trust.

Wow so they won’t just take your word for it that you were there? I don’t think I could work somewhere where I wasn’t trusted and accused of being a liar!!?

Except the onus is not on the company to prove that the transaction happened, it's on the employee. And they've asked for a bank statement. She could redact it with a Sharpie perhaps?! 🤦🏼‍♀️

I'd look for another job. Unless you need to be in the office to see clients in person or something, mandatory days are ridiculous. In the meantime, provide all the evidence you can (train transactions, tickets, bank statements, cctv, recordings of teams call that show you in the office that day, copy of the list of people who had temporray passes that day/sign in list, sworn statements from the security guard and any other colleague who saw you in person that day) and once they back down you can tell them while they wasted your's and their's time gathering evidence, you got another job. Idiots.

Like I already said "CCTV won't have been retained this long" and "the temporary pass log may also not have been retained this long" and "There's a good chance they've checked alternative routes already (like they checked her swipe card and with the temp card)."

The bank transaction timing has also been addressed in my comment ("the bank screenshot shows the clearing date not the purchase date") - that's the whole point. Her screenshot shows the clearing date, the full statement shows the transaction date.

Surely she didn't pay for her train ticket in cash? She could show the proof of that payment?

The manager can't ask the witness because they don't know that there is a witness. OP is refusing to tell them.

As for the fire risk - presumably she wouldn't have been in the building for over a month? So, they would have had the record of her at the time she was there... but not a record a month later.

Respectfully, I appreciate that you're entitled to have a different opinion but I don't think you even read my comment before deciding to disagree because your response says several things that show you didn't read it (or many other comments in the thread).

My statements don’t always show both dates. It will vary by bank.

and again it isn’t on her to have to prove her innocence to compensate for their bad systems. Their pass logs will be kept for a long time. At our work we kept the data for years as it has been used to track employees and prepare evidence in disciplinaries, which have occurred a long time after the event. There is no way I believe the footage and the pass data would have been deleted int he time frame we are discussing.

the card payment for the ticket won’t necessarily show what ticket she bought and what day.

and I did read the comments. I have worked extensively in Hr over the years and this sort of thing we would always exhaust all our internal processes before even attempting to ask an employee something like this. not that I have ever come across this situation as teases have always been recorded otherwise it is a massive security risk someone could take a temp pass and give to someone else

Might have been said but print out a paper copy of bank statement, use a sharpie to blank out other transaction.

what would happen if there was a fire and your temporary pass meant they didn’t know you were in the building.

CCTV. They only need one image of you on the day not the whole day so blurring other images wouldn’t be time consuming and that’s not your problem but theirs. It’s one screenshot from cctv.

Surely it’s pretty simple to redact the other stuff on the statement. Or print it out, strike out other items with a pen, and send copy. Getting the union involved is insane.

Redact the bank statement = cancel the cheque

So much drama.

I'd seriously be thinking that this reaction indicated somebody who had been caught out.

Nobody cares that you spend a fortune in buying stuff from Love Honey or an online pharmacy. Nobody is going to take your bank account and sort code in order to set up transfers or direct debits. So why is it so imperative that nobody sees the account name or anything that could show it isn't a snip from somebody else's bank account or completely faked?

As it's ridiculously easy to pull up a list of transactions from the canteen computer system (and completely justified in cases where a possible case of GPM is being investigated), they probably already know whether there were any payments from your bank card/on your staff account on that day my money's on there not being one.

You'd have to have been recorded as being onsite for the fire register, so there being no record of you signing in is unlikely, especially if the passes get printed from the security system.

There would be a record on the network of you having logged into anything from within the building, emails that have been sent (what with it being an integral part of exchange protocols) - any RDP would also record your access even if you were still for some reason using that inside the building - and then there would be the files that you worked on, SQL database logs recording access requests, change logs and the internet access/search history to go through.

I work on positively archaic systems as well as new ones, both terminal and cloud based and can think of at least 30 separate ways that I could pull reports to demonstrate whether somebody was working in the building, remotely or not at all.

But all of these things have completely failed for the one person who is implying that the 2-3 people who would see a bank statement would instantly use it to commit a criminal offence and is demanding union representation because they were mildly informed that they were one day down on working onsite? If none of these things have been pulled already, it would certainly be an interesting couple of hours for somebody in data/IT to establish whether multiple layers of inbuilt recording of access and work have all failed at once for a single person (or for everybody, that would also make it an important thing to look into immediately).

No - your statements won't show both dates. They'll show the transaction date, like I said. That's why the want the statement, not the screenshot of the app. Because the screenshot of the app shows the clearing date (which is sometimes the same as the transaction date and sometimes not).

Again, she didn't follow their system. That was what caused the initial discrepancy. And, as someone working in HR, you'll know that every employment contract (or employee handbook) will say that employee must support/comply/assist any investigation - which OP is refusing to do.

The card payment doesn't need to show what ticket she bought - it will say she purchased something of the exact value of the ticket on that date. Which is fairly compelling because there's no dispute she worked that day so she wasn't buying a train ticket to her own house.

Saying "I have read the comments" and then going on to say something else that has already been addressed and countered several times is exhausting. Just because the record of temp passes isn't held ad infinitum doesn't mean it wasn't taken at the time and held for the time the pass was out, or for a significant time afterwards. They cannot just hold data forever with no good reason - perhaps OP has just given them their reason to hold that data for longer. Alternatively, maybe they hold it for six months or a year and there's simply no record of OP getting one... I wonder what that might mean.

Honestly I’d just pen over the sensitive bits and give them the statement!
It does seem over the top but then you say your manager believes you and also thinks it stupid but it’s coming from the top , so sounds like it’s just more of a general monitoring system sort of thing- not that you are being micromanaged or personally treated with suspicion .

Redact the other info from your bank statement and share that

This all sounds a bit ridiculous in the sense of why are they so hung up about it if you're getting your work done.
But, you haven't explained why you can't just hand them a piece of paper with all your other transactions blacked out. Or if you're worried about the security of that, print the statement, stick some card on top of the bits that aren't their business, photocopy, and give them that....
Being on MN and talking to the union rep would take far more time than that.

I think your DP is overthinking this. You just print the one page of the statement which shows the transaction. You put a book over the top of the transactions below it. Then whatever leaflets or paper you can find to cover the other the other transactions & account numbers above. You then use your mobile phone to take a photo. Then send it to them. There is no way they will be able to see what is under the book/leaflets, because you've not blocked the info out using any software. It's really this simple. For what it's worth, I don't trust technology to redact information either, but the non-technology method really works.

Yes, this - it's perfectly simple. If it were me though I would just show them my bank statement, they are hardly likely to read all your transactions.

It's all a bit of a non event.

The simplest thing is print out your statement and use a black sharpie to colour out everything else. That’s not replying on software, but for goodness sake , what’s the issue? Are you paying large sums of drug money into your account or what so personal? It’s an easy fix and you are being a bit awkward because they are. But you’ll probably lose for being so.

If they literally have no way of having any idea whether you were in or not, how do they justify tjat it’s so terribly important that you were in?

Ask for them to check the CCTV or block out the other transactions and give them the restaurant statement. There should be a record somewhere from the temporary card you used the day you forgot your ID. It's a payment method using door ID ?

Absolutely don't provide bank statements, it's disgusting that the company asks, and doesn't trust a well performing employee / human being.

Ignore the boot lickers.

But it sounds like its a big organization, with lots of hybrid workers, and the organizations' policy is to track days spent in office.

The OP's manager does not set the policy and is not allowed to simply take the OP at her word. They are just trying to do their job.

The OP did not have her pass (which would have logged her presence) and, whether by glitch or by (poor) design, the temporary pass has not logged attendance.

The OP suggested that she could prove her attendance by providing a record of an on-site purchase that she made. She provided a cropped screenshot of her online banking, which shows that someone made a purchase.

All the manager is asking for, so they can show that they have made an adequate attempt at following the policy that they have to follow (and kept supportive records), is a record which shows that the transaction was made in OP's name. She can redact everything else.

I feel for the manager far more than I do for the OP, and I don't think its reasonable to expect the manager to either (1) not do their job because the OP is refusing a simple, basic and reasonable request, or (2) go to the higher ups to fight for the OP to be given special treatment, over all other employees, and just be taken at her word because she fancies being awkward.

Even if you think it is unreasonable for a large company with a hybrid workforce to monitor attendance instead of taking everyone at their word, it is not the manager's fault that the policy exists and they are being entirely fair and flexible towards the OP.

He’s chatting absolute rubbish.

use the correct one and it’s foolproof. It “flattens” (technical term) the PDF and it cannot be reversed. He might work in a cyber type role but my day job is redaction.

CCTV - they don’t even need to hand it over. It can just be viewed at the terminal.