Broken trust

[Shampooand]

My former line manager was an energy vampire and caused problems for the company and left as he said he was ‘bullied’ out. I know for a fact he was not following company policies and procedures so being questioned on your conduct is not bullying. He used to moan about the company in my one to ones, so unprofessional.

After he left he kept in touch and had similar issues at his new workplace and tried to blame that employer too. Yesterday my new line manager has told me this former colleague had not returned company equipment from our company which had been found at his new temporary employer and my one to one notes he printed. The new employer found this stuff and sent it back to our company as he has since left there.

I am so angry he betrayed my trust and broke GDPR and now the data protection officer and investigating officer have read my one to one notes as part of the breach investigation. I don’t want my new line manager reading the notes as they are personal and he was not my manager at the time.

I don’t know why he used to print my notes off as you are supposed to put them in the shred bin as they get uploaded onto the HR portal.

I feel sick and want to cry. I don’t really want to speak to this vile ex colleague again.

Anyone got any advice please?

Aah that sounds really violating. Are you aware of the content of the 1:1 notes or is it notes he’s taken as part of your 1:1’s that you haven’t seen?

Do you think you could email the investigating officer to discuss? I’m no gdpr expert but perhaps you could ask to see the information that pertains to you and also request/check that they are not shared outside of the investigation team (or any summary in reporting) and not with anyone relating to your current line management chain or team. you could also contact any hr advice service that you have to talk through?

Depending on what your current line manager is like and how comfortable you feel with them - do you feel you could talk to them about this and ask them to also intervene if necessary? There is no reason for them to see your personal information and I’d have thought that gdpr investigators would be very cautious in sharing.

Thank you for replying and putting my mind at ease. I emailed the data protection officer and asked them. I suppose they cannot breach GDPR sharing information around.