Confidentiality issue-need help asap

gismo

I need some feedback on this one. We have a PT receptionist that was given a mailing job to complete. She was told what to do, and told what the form was that she was mailing. This was a form that lists balances of IRA's, SS#, address, account numbers you name it. The forms are perferated and are to be seperated and mailed to 3 seperate individuals. She mailed the whole sheet to the person at the top of the form. We now have a serious problem trying to notify the individuals that have another persons form which we will immediately try and deal with. We want to let this person go immediately, any problems in doing so? She has been talked to in the past about confidentialy - she tends to be quite nosy.

Your advice would be appreciated.

lorrie

I don't see any problem with termination, especially if the past problem is documented, and you haven't allowed other employees to get away with this. Regardless of whether she is careless because she doesn't care, or if she just isn't capable, she needs to be replaced.

marc

I am wondering why you would feel uncertain about being able to fire this person.

A couple of comments: Just because she is personally nosy does not bear on the mistake she made with the mailing, other than the fact that she has had some issue that rose to a verbal warning - not even a written one.

This is an entirely different breech of confidentiality, one that was likely done through misunderstanding the mailing instructions.

This person is obviously going to take the fall for this mistake - perhaps she deserves it, but it does not sound like a continuation of the earlier problem.

Whatever

Why did you give confidential forms to a nosy ee?

AnneHa

Not long ago, I was shocked when I received the results of a drug test on another company's ee. When I called to report it, I was advised to shred the report and they would take care of the situation. I heard in the roundabout way of small towns that the ee responsible for the mistake was terminated.

I would have recommended termination, too.

Anne in Ohio

dchr9203

Depends. First, as a general rule I don't allow anyone outside of HR to handle, mail, or otherwise see documents that contain confidential information. Part of my Type-A personality, but mostly because people who don't work in HR don't really get nor respect the whole confidentiality thing. Next, and this is a generalization that I realize does not hold true in all cases, so please no one get their feathers ruffled; its just an opinion. I have not found that part-time receptionists have the best independent or critical thinking skills. Unless your instructions were more than clear (i.e. tear apart and place in separate envelopes with that person's name on it), then it doesn't surprise me that she didn't do it. She made a mistake and while its a somewhat serious one, I don't think I would fire her for it. Weigh in her skill as a receptionist. If she's good at that then I'd make sure she knew about her mistake, how serious, and how disappointed you are.

ritaanz

I guess the receptionist reports to HR? Otherwise, why would you give her confidential info. I have to agree with dchr as to the kind of instructions she was given. I can not imagine that she did this on purpose.

In this particular case, the receptionist wasn't nosy enough. If she had read the documents, she would have known that they were for 3 different people.

If this were my employee, I would ask her what she was told and by whom. At least give her a chance to explain.

pork1

I concurr, but I bet you'll get her "dumb stare" and you'll still terminate, yesterday. I hope you will be able to recover the mis-sent documents and get them to the right person.

PORK

gismo

To update you on our problem. This happened in one of our other offices, this EE was not given the documents by me to mail. Senior management has decided NOT to terminate, all have agreed, there was an error in judgement haveing this EE handle this mailing and that obviously, instructions were not detailed enough. Her supervisor had to take some (alot) of the responsibility for this error!

Don D

'Judgement' is the outcome of a thought process which involves a conscious decision to do something one way or another. I don't see her involved to that depth. Simply, she did what she thought she had been instructed to do, and MAY HAVE been told to do.

HRLASS

We have had to use a temporary employee to catch up on some filing of benefits information, including that for some of our executives. I got a special Confidentiality Agreement from our legal department, carefully explained to her what she was working with and the confidentiality issues involved, and she had to sign the agreement before she was allowed to see anything. That was in addition to the confidentiality clause in the agency contract.