This week a troublesome ex-employee is still causing issues. How should they be handled?
The question:
I have an ex employee who is now requesting a copy of their signed contract of employment.
The employee left the company on bad terms. Their contract was terminated within their first year of employment for a number of reasons. They were given a full month’s paid notice and an open reference. Even with this the ex employee was not happy and is still with holding company information which has been requested on several occasions with no avail.
Are we within our rights to withhold sending the contract as requested until they have returned the outstanding information to us?
Legal advice:
Martin Brewer, partner, Mills & Reeve
The ex-employee will be entitled to a copy of personal data you hold on them if they make a valid request under the Data Protection Act. In any event you should not worry about holding a contract to ransom. Send them a copy. More importantly if this employee has information belonging to you this may actually be theft and in any event you can take a civil action for recovery of it and you should seek urgent legal advice about this.
Martin Brewer can be contacted at martin.brewer@mills-reeve.com. For further information, please visit Mills & Reeve.
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Esther Smith, partner, Thomas Eggar
The employee does have a right to a copy of their contract under a data subject request under the Data Protection Act 1998, but you have 40 days to comply with that request and can charge them an administrative fee of £10 if you wanted to be difficult!
However, as the employee has information that you want, I suggest the most practical way of dealing with this is to say to the employee that there is a copy of the contract waiting for him at your offices and he can collect this when he delivers back the information that you want from him. This makes it hard for him to argue that you have not provided him with a copy, as you have but he has chosen not to come and collect it.
Esther Smith is a partner in Thomas Eggar’s Employment Law Unit. For further information, please visit Thomas Eggar.
