Are work schedules confidential?

[got2bebrave]

Hi can anyone confirm from an employment law perspective, whether work schedules (days and times people work) are confidential, when provided for internal use only within a team - ie not made public to anyone other than co-workers. Thanks

I think that's Data Protection Act / GDPR rather than employment law? What level of detail has been shared with whom?

I would think it should be kept confidential. Sharing it publicly could potentially put people at risk.

At an absolute push. Surely co-workers need to know what days you work? How would rotas be managed?

How can you work in a team if you don't know when other people are working?? Why would it be a secret?

If I need assistance from another dept, and they all only work Wednesday then obviously I need to know that?!

How can your team function if they don't know when people are in.

Well presumably for a team to work efficiently it is important for them to know the work schedules of others on their team. It may not be appropriate to share the reason why someone isn't at work but the fact that they are not at work should be fine to share.

I know the work schedule of everyone in my team - those I manage and those on the other side of our department. Surely internally people need to know that information to work effectively with you?

Actually, anyone not full time in my workplace has their hours on their email footer so people don’t get annoyed that emails haven’t been replied to.

I don’t think OP is referring to other colleagues seeing it, I think they are referring to it being publicly available info. so maybe clients/customers etc.

That’s how I read it anyway.

But surely even customers or clients will be told from time to time she only works Tuesday to Thursday or similar if they are asking to talk to you

I think it's entirely reasonable for both internal and external people to know the schedules of people's working hours.

Perhaps not so much in a public facing role where the person asking is a customer and the employee works in a shop, for example, but in office based, back roles, I don't see a problem.

Do you mean within a team? We have open calendars and everyone is supposed to display working hours and days on calendars and emails signatures. It's actually really annoying when people dont if they work PT or non standard hours as it makes setting up meetings difficult. So I don't see the problem.

She clearly states not made public to anyone other than coworkers.

I would consider it need-to-know, but that might still include people outside the team or even completely outside the organisation like customers/clients. I see work hours included in email footers for part-timers or out-of-office replies all the time because it helps manage expectations of response times and who to contact if working hours don't line up.

What is Workplace Confidentiality in England and Wales? | LegalVision UK

I thought op was saying it is supposed to be internal, but if it’s made public then is that then a confidentiality issue. Ie a colleague sharing it when they’re not supposed to.

@got2bebrave can you clarify what you mean?

Do you mean more like you're a physio/nurse/ahp and patients are calling in to ask if you're on shift?

Work schedules in most workplaces need to be shared with colleagues so you can manage workload, plan meetings etc. But anyone who is not at work a particular time / day etc you don’t need to share or disclose reasons with anyone except line mgmt.

I’m assuming it is ok to share a rota with other staff internally. It’s done in most places I have worked, either explicitly (by Rotas with everyone’s names in posted up) or by a by product of things like email signatures, diaries shared etc.

op is there a particular issue you have having that might provide better context for your query?

I think it makes sense to know other people’s work schedules. It’s possible for different parts of the organisation to have different levels of access. I once worked somewhere where i had lots of client meetings. A manager tried to say we shouldn’t put the names of the clients on our outlook calendars because anyone in the org could look at it. My argument was I do actually need to know who I’m meant to be meeting, and also my team need to know this. The answer is to restrict the access that people outside of my team so they can only see busy/free.

I suspect it will be entirely at the discretion of your employer.

Our roster is online and all members of the team can see their colleagues as well as their own. I’m not sure why that would be an issue. It’s unavoidable as everyone needs be responsible for ensuring we have adequate staff anyway.

Most people who work part time, for example, have something like ‘My working hours are 9-5pm, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They’d have an out of office on for the same period, or a colleague might pick up the phone to a client and say, ‘Janine works Tuesdays and Wednesdays so you could catch her tomorrow’. I can’t imagine they’d be a secret?

I'd say it's fairly expected practice though for employees to use e.g. an out of office to let anyone trying to contact them know when they are next back in the office, or for the information about e.g. when a doctor or police officer is next back on shift if a member of the public wants to contact them.

so on that basis, no I don't think making information about employee availability available will be a GDPR issue in itself.

I used to have a printout on my fridge when I worked shifts so family knew what I was doing. Never ypthiught it was a probkem