Data Protection Act

[TEAK36]

Is it illegal for my HR Manager to give me the home address of one of our employees?

In my office we have around 50 small pigeon holes, and each of these pigeon holes is assigned to a field based employee, and this is where we put all of their post until it is ready to be franked.Each pigoen hole has a set of sticky labels showing the home address of each person, and a couple of times a week all the post is franked and collected by Royal Mail.

We have a new field based employee, and I would like to create a pigeon hole for this employee, but when I asked HR for the home address of this person, they said they could not supply it to me beacause of the data protection act.
Surely this cannot be correct, HR have always given me addresses in the past. Has there been a change in the law?

[antiguru]

HR are right to be cautious about giving out employee�s addresses but in this case I suspect they�re just not concentrating on what you�re asking them.

The problem arises when an employee feels the data they have given is being used in a way they would not have expected it to be used. Field based employees would be expected to understand that their home address is going to be used to send them stuff, so I don�t believe this would be a breach of the DPA.

I�m actually more concerned about who has access to the pigeon holes. It�s fine that post staff are aware of the data as they have to use it, but the addresses shouldn�t really be sat there for everyone to see.

[eyebrows]

would it not be easier to kneecapp them instead....teach em' a lesson?

[Twenty20]

It's crazy isnt it? Phone books, for instance, are filled with nearly everyone's names, addresses, phone numbers....then you get some numpty in HR who says they can't give you an address of an employee to forward on their mail!

Go back and tell them to be sensible.

[Sasha13]

Twenty20 - that argument is daft and ill conceived.

A person has a choice as to whether their name and address is listed in a phone book.

A person doesn't have a choice if 'some numpty in HR' gives someone else their address without their permission.

[Twenty20]

Err, Sasha13 are you on the same planet as the rest of us?

How do you think a person's mail is going to get forwarded on to them if no one's allowed to know their address! This person's job is to forward on the mail - they probably need the address to do that don't you think?!!!

Dear oh Lord! The knots some people tie themselves in!!

[WaldoMcFroog]

I pretty much agree with Antiguru. The Data Protection Act says that information must be held for "specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes". Contacting employees with business-related information is clearly within that scope.

You could, of course, contact the employee and ask him or her for their address, but the point made by Antiguru is a sensible one - why have the employee's address on display? That could cause the employee unwarranted distress.

[Sasha13]

Twenty20 The 'numpty in HR' is still right to be cautious. I work in HR and get fed up of people having a go at me for trying to be careful about whose information I splash about.

antiguru is right in that field based employees might expect that things would be posted to their home, but then my current role is national and I still don't get mail sent home.

And the argument that he uses saying 'field based employees would be expected to understand that their home address is going to be used to send them stuff so I don't believe this would be a breach of the DPA' is not right either - the onus would fall on the HR person to prove that the field based employee had given them permission to use this data in this way.

I'm not saying that no one is allowed to know the field based employees address.

I'm saying the HR professional is right to be cautious about giving it out, and shouldn't be labelled a numpty.

[antiguru]

Sasha 13 � having a national role and being field based are two different things. Field based means not office based, which means that their home address is their contact address for things that might otherwise be left in an intray if they were office based.

While I welcome your agreement that the HR person should not be labelled a numpty I stand by my response that a field based person could reasonably expect this.