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Topic: Firing policies?

Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 08-10-2005 03:00 AM

quote: David Buckley
Failure to follow the process [in the UK] is bad news for an employer, if yon want to sack someone, you have to do it right.

Another related point on record keeping is that our Data Protection Act gives wide-ranging legal rights to the subject of data held on computer, but not on paper. Basically (unless it's covered by one or two exceptions such as the Official Secrets Act), I can demand that any individual or organisation which holds information about me on a computer provides me with a copy and corrects any errors if I tell them to. Failure to do this is a criminal offence, as is keeping personal data without being registered with a government agency under the act. But none of that applies to records held on paper, in which form an employer can hold what he likes and is under no obligation to show any of it to anybody. For that reason, one company I once worked for had a strict policy of keeping employee records on paper in a filing cabinet only. Any letters, written warnings or anything of that sort were printed out and deleted immediately from the office PC, and the printout kept in the cabinet. I often wondered what would happen if those paper records were lost (e.g. in a fire), and the company later had a problem with an employee. As far as I'm aware, they didn't keep duplicate copies.

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Mark Hajducki
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 500
From: Edinburgh, UK
Registered: May 2003

posted 08-10-2005 05:21 AM

The UK Data protection act now applies to paper based records as well

quote:
- The information is held electronically (e.g. on computer), is intended to be held electronically, or it is in paper form held in certain specified types of manual/paper- based filing systems.

Source

Many firms are going through files to remove any unwanted information. (It is legal to destroy records untill somebody requests them)

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David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 08-10-2005 09:54 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
an employer can hold what he likes and is under no obligation to show any of it to anybody

I don't think that's true here. An employee can request to see his file, including performance reviews, disciplinary actions, etc. and the employer must comply. If there's a dispute, I think the employee can place his written rebuttal into the file, but the employer is under no obligation to remove anything that's in dispute.

Anyone know if I've got that right? [Confused]

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 08-11-2005 08:55 AM

quote: Mark Hajducki
The UK Data protection act now applies to paper based records as well...

...'held in certain specified types of manual/paper-based filing systems'; and the list of exemptions is quite long as well. The way I read it, if the employer can make any realistic claim that the records are there for health and safety or crime prevention purposes, not to mention 'to prevent prejudice to negotiations', there's no need to disclose. I don't know precisely what the loophole was through which my former employers used a paper-based filing system to avoid having to disclose employee personal records to their subjects, but they were absolutely certain that they didn't have to. AFAIK, no-one ever called their bluff on it, though.

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