Confidentiality and GDPR rules

[mariastone]

Hello. I hope someone working in HR/legal can help.

A person at work made a serious complaint against another person, but asked that it remained confidential. HR resolved it quietly without informing the other party. Is it against the law to inform the accused that a complaint was made against them?

If there is an investigation, then the accused would have to be spoken to in order to get their side of the story.

There was no investigation. The change of working pattern was implemented to separate them and that was it. The accused was given an unrelated reason as to why the change was made.

Why would that be unlawful?

Is there anything on the accusers record? If not I think that's fine.

Someone was unhappy and hr accommodated a change to their work hours to improve their work life. Sounds like a good result with no one else caused any distress

I doubt it could be against the law, was the complaint about a GDPR breech, is that was you mean? If so it should be reported externally, otherwise I’m not sure what this can have to do with GDPR.

What is the actual problem here?

You want to stir things up by spreading the accusation?

Someone else has done that?

What?

I do think that if the name of the accused has been noted anywhere in writing and the accused were to find out about it, they could request a copy of any documents.

Why would what sounds like a practical resolution be against the law?

I suspect that GDPR is not the most relevant legislation. The most relevant laws might be about the nature of the complaint, for instance sexual harassment might be very different from "bullying" and different again from allegations of theft.

I know very little, whistleblowing laws could be what applies here, too.

If the accuser has had some adjustments and the accused is unaware - if both are happy - what’s the issue?

Sounds like HR didn’t investigate, thus didn’t take the complaint too seriously and seek to to find an easy solution out of it.

If the accused had suffered somehow - that’s a different issue but you’ll need to be more specific about allegations and what he have implemented.

HR person here.

Misunderstanding of 'confidentiality' causes lots of problems.

A 'serious allegation' should be properly investigated.

If an employee asks to say something in confidence, it should be explained to them that this may not be possible, as you have no idea what they will tell you. While their privacy will be respected if possible, we have a duty of care to employees, and the organisation, so sometimes information needs to be shared, even if that's not what the employee wants.