Line manager has told colleagues I am pregnant

[Sunshinedaisybuttermellow]

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place but thought it seemed most fitting.

I am currently 10 weeks pregnant. Due to my job, I have already told my line manager as we require risk assessments to be completed.
I specifically told her that it is not common knowledge, it is very early and I'm not ready for people to know. There is a colleague who I previously worked closely with when seconded to a higher level. Due to the end of the secondment she is now slightly senior to me again, but we worked at an equivalent level for just over 2 years.

Today I got an email from this colleague, saying congratulations on my pregnancy and that my manager has delegated my risk assessment to her. I am not ready for colleagues to know about my pregnancy, especially not when I haven't even told all of my family yet.

Is my line manager allowed to tell people I am pregnant without my consent?
Is it not considered private medical information?

@Thewindsofchange

As someone who has had this same confidentially breached at work for 'work' reasons I would be fuming. How hard is it for the manager to ask op if it ok for x to be delegated to do the risk assessment? You should never presume you can tell something like this to someone else, even another manager. In my case word eventually got round my whole team. I only found out they knew when I returned from having a miscarriage, which again everyone had to be informed about, without my knowledge or consent. It all started for 'work reasons', not idle gossip but was devastating all the same. Op at least you know and can ask the one person to keep it confidential but I would be asking your manager not to tell anyone else without speaking to you first. I don't care if others think I'm being touchy or over sensitive, it was like a punch in the gut when I was already delicate and was so easily avoided.

I’m sorry about your experience, but there is no requirement for the manager to ask permission to delegate a risk assessment, that’s their job.

Hmm I can see how you feel OP.

Realistically unless work are going to make adaptations for you I would not have told my manager at this early stage at all. Posters are been harsh people do miscarriage in the early stages and it must be awful to explain that to colleagues if anything was to happen.

Posters are right though your manger had to liase with the person above you.

What the actual fuck.

Yes the contents of a woman's uterus absolutely is private. The flip side of that coin is "the contents of a woman's uterus should be public knowledge". It astounds me that people can be so stupid.

If a man is booked in for a vasectomy and told his line manager but otherwise didn't want other people to know, would you say "oh another of those, men thinking their bollocks are private business" I seriously doubt it.

@Sunshinedaisybuttermellow Your line manager should have advised you she would have to share it with xxx to do the risk assessment. It's basic courtesy even if the assessment is required.

@GreyhoundG1rl

God, is this another of those "the contents of my uterus are PRIVATE" posts? Bloody hell.

Sorry that was in response to this post!

What the actual fuck.

Yes the contents of a woman's uterus absolutely is private. The flip side of that coin is "the contents of a woman's uterus should be public knowledge". It astounds me that people can be so stupid.

If a man is booked in for a vasectomy and told his line manager but otherwise didn't want other people to know, would you say "oh another of those, men thinking their bollocks are private business" I seriously doubt it.

@Sunshinedaisybuttermellow Your line manager should have advised you she would have to share it with xxx to do the risk assessment. It's basic courtesy even if the assessment is required.

@GreyhoundG1rl @Musicaltheatremum. You should be outright ashamed get over your ugly selves. Horrible people.

My issue isn't with the risk assessment being delegated, more so that it was done without consent.

Although the colleague is senior to me, she works in a completely different department which I no longer work in, and her day to day work is extremely different to mine.

After I initially told my manager and said it was early days, she then started talking about it in an open office. I reiterated it was not common knowledge and I didn't want it to be.
There have also been other members of my line managers team who have made comments which may imply they are aware of the pregnancy without saying it outright.

My line manager had also arranged for a meeting between myself and her for Wednesday to do the risk assessment, so I was not expecting it to be then delegated to someone else.
If line manager had said she wouldn't be able to do the risk assessment and could she delegate I wouldn't have minded. But I've been having a lot of bleeding and a lot of appointments to check if everything is OK, and honestly the less people who know the better as far as I'm concerned.

there is no requirement for the manager to ask permission to delegate a risk assessment, that’s their job.

My LM isn't trained to do RAs, in fact we only have a handful of staff trained to cover 300+ colleagues. RAs are a legally binding document, put in place to protect an employee, or visitor, or customer, or client etc, and for things ranging from pregnancy to cleaning chemicals, dealing with disabilities and ye gods the number of RAs we've had new versions of for covid in the last 18 months.

Perhaps it should have been communicated better, but YABVU to think that something as important as a RA should not be delegated to the correctly trained colleague.

My issue isn't with the risk assessment being delegated, more so that it was done without consent.

How exactly would that work if you didn't consent? Once you made your manager aware of the pregnancy the RA became a legal requirement.

Do other employees get veto power over the person assigned to do their risk assessment? Assuming not, why on earth should OP? The rules everyone else has to live with don't magically stop applying to you just because you're pregnant.

I told the Head at my school that I was pregnant. She told the Deputy Head and Business Manager as it was need to know for risk assessments and cover arrangements. I didn’t know that either of them knew until I mentioned it to the Deputy Head, she said she already knew and congratulated me then. I wasn’t annoyed that they had been told.

I’d say it was fine that someone else was told for necessity reasons but that could have been kept hidden until you announced it.

more so that it was done without my consent

You raised the matter of your pregnancy in order to get the appropriate risk assessments carried out as far as I can tell. Why would they then need your consent? An organisation does not need the consent of the staff to carry out risk assessments.

I am an experienced manager of very many years, but I have never carried out risk assessments (other than business risk but not employee health risk) as that is not my job and not something I have had training in. Unless you are about to announce you are in the occupational health risk assessment departments, I am baffled as to why you thought your manager might be the person to carry out the risk assessment.

You are frankly being ridiculous and are going to get a bad name for yourself as one of those awkward employees if you carry on like this,

It is not uncommon. I had the company nurse come up to me at my desk wanting to do a risk assessment for my desk area as she had been told I was pregnant. I was not pregnant - HR had got me mixed up with someone else (it was quite common - we got each others emails, phone calls). A discrete word with the nurse and she went back to HR to confirm. Rumours took a while to die down though.

It would have taken the line manager a few seconds to email/speak with you to update you that the meeting she had arranged with you with herself for the risk ax would now be with colleague x. And she could in the same communication with you reassured you that colleague x is aware of the confidentiality of the situation. Especially as you had previously worked alongside colleague x.
So it is a communication/courtesy issue imo.

She's told the person doing the risk assessment.

What was she supposed to do? Say I need a risk assessment for pregnancy, but not tell them who?

@Sunshinedaisybuttermellow

My issue isn't with the risk assessment being delegated, more so that it was done without consent.

Although the colleague is senior to me, she works in a completely different department which I no longer work in, and her day to day work is extremely different to mine.

After I initially told my manager and said it was early days, she then started talking about it in an open office. I reiterated it was not common knowledge and I didn't want it to be.
There have also been other members of my line managers team who have made comments which may imply they are aware of the pregnancy without saying it outright.

My line manager had also arranged for a meeting between myself and her for Wednesday to do the risk assessment, so I was not expecting it to be then delegated to someone else.
If line manager had said she wouldn't be able to do the risk assessment and could she delegate I wouldn't have minded. But I've been having a lot of bleeding and a lot of appointments to check if everything is OK, and honestly the less people who know the better as far as I'm concerned.

Why would they need your consent? It’s your line managers decision who completes the RA not yours....no consent needed