Access to Public Employee's personnel records

ngordon

We are in the process of writing a policy regarding access to information in employees' personnel records. We would like to find out from others what information they would release to others in the organization, to whom, why and under what circumstances.

We are a public employer in the state of Louisiana.

System

I work for a county government here in California. We generally considered salary information of employees inlcuding managers to be confidential (officials were different though). A couple of years ago, our legal counsel for the county held that individual salaries were public information and many of county managers' salaries were listed in the local papers. We do consider other information -- e.g., evaluations -- to be confidential. They may be released internally to those managers and officials with a "need to know", usually if there is a manager who may be considering "hiring" the employee into his or her particular operation. The hiring manager may contact the existing manager or supervisor and discuss the empoyee's work, etc. Most likely they will know each other. Managers from other agencies in the county may obtain information but usually after a more rigorous verification or specific authorization to release from the employee. Some departments in the county will automatically get the employee to sign a written authorization for the current department or supervisor to release specific information. So, you can see there is a distinction that is made between managers and supervisors in the current employee's department or agency and those from other departments and agency even if they are part of the county structure. Of course, medical information (e.g., the post offer physical examination) is kept separate from the personnel records and is confidential from even management. That information is kept by the county's central human resources' medical section. Local departmental management or HR or the employee's supervisor may keep information related to request for reasonable accommodation under ADA.