Annual Leave Recording

[Sarcelle]

Quick question for HR people, or those who know about GDPR. Or others experience.

We record our leave on electronic leave cards which you email to your line manager, and he sends back authorised. It is the same for the whole team.

We have a new senior manager and she has set out how she wants info stored in future. She wants our leave cards put in a team folder online where we can all see each other's leave cards. This does not sit well with me. I don't see why I need to see a colleague's leave card, or they mine. The card does not only record annual leave it can record other leave like time off for family bereavement. I am worried about people tampering with them too. I work in a toxic team and I have trust issues with some of them. A) they will be checking people's leave and be generally nosy and b) they might alter them. As far as I am aware there have been no issues, just a new person changing things.

We all work various work patterns, have different leave allocation, so they are not straightforward and all the same.

In these day's of GDPR it seems an odd request. Do other people have access to the team's leave cards? Would it make you uneasy too?

Where I work, we can the leave 'cards' (they are online) for our immediate colleagues in our team. It's a handy way of seeing who else has booked leave before we request our own, as we know that only a certain number can be off at any one time.

We don't have that same issue, looking to see who is off at the same time. We all work independently of each other so that's not the issue.

Can they be password protected?

Possibly. My brief look online suggests that this is considered personal data and as such covered by GDPR.

They definitely need to be saved as 'read only' documents. However, I don't know why they should be accessible to everyone. There is no reason, so should be kept somewhere private.

I'm assuming your manager just wants them all kept in one place for her own ease of administration, rather than her actually wanting you all to be able to look at each other's cards?

If so and the data can be protected so that each person can only access their own leave card, then I don't think it's unreasonable for her to want them all kept in one place.

If she actually wants you all to be able to look at each other's cards then I'd agree that it's personal data and you have the right to refuse.

The world had gone Gdpr mad !

Nothing has been said about being password protected or read only. Just being stored in one place. I have no issue with her or my line manager seeing and accessing it. I do if my colleagues have that same access and me to theirs.

OP I wouldn’t be happy with this either. We have a system where you can see who is off and when but it doesn’t say the reason, only your line manager can see that. We also have nosey/toxic people in my work as I assume a lot of places do and I wouldn’t want them to know if I was taking time off for bereavement or a maternity appointment for example. Have you explained your reasons to your manager?

Annual leave wouldn't be covered under gdpr but yrs its not really appropriate for colleagues to see reasons for special leave.

@couchlover - if you see the image above, it seems that it is considered personal data under GDPR.

I have not mentioned it, it is very recent. She is nice, new, and don't want to get off to a bad start with her.

It would be covered under GDPR - it's your personal data and you can be identified from it. Especially as it records bereavement leave etc.

She can't require you to keep it in a communal and accessible place without your express permission. She just might not realise the implications, but it could get the whole organisation in trouble if someone reported it. Your organisation should have a policy that covers handling of staff data and it will certainly make it clear that staff records of any kind should be stored securely and not accessible for public consumption.

My colleagues and I all have different FTE leave allocations due to joining at different times and changes to T&C. Mine is significantly higher than new joiners for instance, and although theirs will increase year on year no one will be able to earn as much leave as I have. It can cause huge resentment.

The same is true in our organisation. A few of us with protected terms. It would cause resentment needlessly.

Not uncommon to have some kind of shared calendar did teams can see who is off, surely

A shared calendar is one thing, but I don't think sick leave levels etc should be available to anyone but the Manager.

She should either have you all pw protect them or use store in such a way that you only have access to your own.

I would raise your concerns nicely. She may simply not have thought it through.

It is not a team calendar. It would be our individual leave cards which records annual leave, compassionate leave, special leave etc. They do not record sick leave on the cards. I think this is personal data.

Our team calendar shows when people are out of the office, but only the individual and manager can see if it's AL or medical or bereavement or or dependent or training or jury service or military service or whatever else (our leave system covers all countries we operate in.) You can only see your own leave balance, too.

In reality, we're quite a close team, so usually know why the others are off, but there's a big difference between people choosing to share and it being open to the whole department by default. It's definitely personal information and thus subject to GDPR, and would have been covered by the data protection act before that.

Yes, I think it's a no brainer. It is definitely personal data.

I see my teams leave.
Not sure how it’s covered under personal data - it’s just a day that you have off that everyone is entitled to. Considering we all put out of office on out outlook, who cares.

GDPR isn’t a blanket term for everything. I was told to turn of my dash cam for gdpr, no F off.

I can see people in my teams future leave, which is good for planning my own leave, but nothing in past so wouldn't see things like sick or bereavement leave.

Also does your company have rules of how many people can be of on one day? Also what happens if you need to contact a member of staff and they don’t have their out of office/you have no idea where they are?