1 Feb 2010, 09:00

A woman told us she had been the victim of bullying by a colleague. Her employer had held a meeting with her to discuss her allegations of bullying. The meeting was recorded, and a verbatim transcript produced. The employer subsequently provided a full copy of the transcript to the alleged bully. The woman considered this to be an interference with her privacy.

The employer acknowledged that it had given the full transcript to the alleged bully, but believed it had a proper basis to do so under principles 11(a) and 11(d).

Principle 11(a)

Principle 11(a) allows an agency to disclose personal information if disclosure was one of the purposes in connection with which the information was obtained, or is directly related to that purpose. Here, the employer said that the personal information in the transcript had been obtained for the purposes of investigating the alleged bullying, and as a result the employer could disclose the transcript to the alleged bully for that purpose.

We agreed that the employer had a proper basis under principle 11(a) to provide the allegations and associated details about the bullying to the alleged bully in order to meet the requirements of natural justice.

However, there was a considerable amount of other personal information about the woman in the transcript which did not directly relate to those allegations. There was, for example, information about how the alleged bullying had affected the woman's mental and physical health. We did not accept that principle 11(a) provided the employer with a proper basis to release this personal information.

Principle 11(d)

Principle 11(d) allows an agency to disclose personal information if it has reasonable grounds to believe that the disclosure was authorised by the individual concerned. The employer argued that at the meeting the woman had authorised the employer to provide the alleged bully with the transcript.

We were satisfied that the complainant had been aware that the meeting was being recorded, and that her allegations of bullying would subsequently be put to the alleged bully for comment. However, we did not accept that she had authorised the release of the full transcript. We were satisfied that she had not been told that a transcript was going to be created from the recording until some weeks after the meeting. At that point she had told the employer that she did not want the transcript to be provided to the alleged bully.

We considered that there was a difference between telling the woman that the allegations she was making would be put to the alleged bully for comment, and subsequently giving the alleged bully a verbatim transcript of the meeting. We considered the employer needed to get an explicit authorisation from the woman to the disclosure of the transcript in order to rely on the exception in 11(d), and this had not been obtained in this case.

Settlement

The woman told us that the matter would be resolved for her if the employer would amend its policies around recording meetings. While this was not the specific issue that was the subject of the privacy complaint the employer agreed to amend its policies in order to settle the matter.

After the employer had confirmed to us that its policies had been amended we discontinued our investigation on the basis that the matter had been settled.


May 2010

Disclosure of personal information - employment - principle 11 - principle 11(a) - principle 11(d) - transcripts - settlement