Any HR or GDPR experts about?

[shadytrees]

I have 2 entirely separate roles and contracts within a very large employer. They are both very part time and do not come into contact with each other at all and the working hours never overlap.

I was briefly off sick for role 1, nowhere near any trigger point or official process. Now manager of role 2 has been told about it by HR. I feel this is really out of order and possibly a GDPR breach? Can anyone confirm?

It’s nothing to do with GDPR.

Sharing info about your sickness internally… what was their reason?

I can’t see how op. You can’t expect secrecy within management,

I find it really odd they gave you two separate contracts, I’d expect one contract detailing both roles.

I’ll wait for someone more certain to come along but my assumption would be that you have one ‘employer’ so if it’s relevant for manager 2 to know in order for the ‘employer’ to manage you, then there is no breach. Obviously if they were gossiping that’s different!

Nothing to do with GDPR. I might lean the other way actually. If you're working for the company and go off sick, they'll want both managers to know from a well-being point of view.

In our organisation, all sickness is logged on our central HR system, so anyone with management access to your record would be able to see it. You have two separate contracts but we would only have one HR record for you in which both of these were stored.

Not a breach. Whats the issue anyway?

Hiya, with GDPR it’s also what you have ‘agreed to’. When we take on new employee we have to make them sign a slip of paper about how we’ll use their data, this should be in your ‘employee handbook’ too. It’s likely you’ve agreed to them using data interdepartmentally so if it’s one business I think they are fine.
I do think you’re making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill here. Why couldn’t your other team know you’d called in sick?

It’s not that unusual. It’s more unusual to give one contract for 2 roles especially if the roles aren’t linked.

OP can give notice on either role and keep the other. Tied into a single contract makes this harder.

I would expect absence data to be shared internally as it’s logged by the staff member not by the role. Employees have a single personnel file (might vary at other places but this is certainly the case where I have worked) and sickness is logged against that. Annoying I know because if you had 2 jobs for 2 employers no one would be calling your other boss.

Thanks all.

You're right that the way employee data is stored, processed and shared should be set out in a staff handbook or similar. However, it would be very unusual for employers to rely on consent as a legal basis for storing/processing sickness records, as consent can be withdrawn by the data subject at any time. It's more likely that they rely on the contract and/or legitimate interest.