Sensitive employment information breach: Over £10,000 settlement

The leading team at Your Lawyers – the Data Leak Lawyers – previously recovered over £10,000 in damages for a client we represented in a matter involving the disclosure of sensitive employment information.

The impact on our client was substantial because healthcare data was involved, and this sort of case can attract much higher awards. Some awards can be in excess of £10,000 to reflect the significance of any distress that has been suffered.

Over £10,000 settled for sensitive employment information breach

Our team previously recovered over £10,000 in damages for a client we represented in a matter for a privacy incident involving sensitive employment information being disclosed. The manner in which the data was disclosed was somewhat deliberate and possibly even malicious, but it constituted a breach of the GDPR and had a significant impact on our client.

We are unable to go into the finer details of the matter for client confidentiality reasons. The information disclosed was about our client’s healthcare, which is data that can be classed as “special category” information in accordance with the GDPR, affording its additional protection. This is because the law recognises that this is the type of data that we usually want to maintain strict confidentiality over. As such, to have that disclosed in the manner in which it was had a significant impact on our client, which is why we were able to recover over £10,000 in damages for them.

Privacy in the workplace is vital

Privacy in the workplace is absolutely vital to make sure that sensitive employment information is protected at all times. There will be occasions when employees may need to disclose particular information to their employer, but this is done so with the expectation that confidentiality will be maintained. Just because information has been confidentially shared with an employer for various reasons does not give anyone in a managerial position the right to then disseminate such data to other people in the workplace. At the same time, access to human resources data should be strictly controlled and limited to prevent colleagues being able to inadvertently access data that they should not be able to.

If there is ever an incident in which sensitive employment information is breached, leaked, disclosed, or otherwise misused, that could constitute a breach of the GDPR, as was the case above that we recovered over £10,000 in damages for our client. As leading privacy compensation experts operating in England and Wales, we are pleased that we were able to recover such a healthy amount for our client to allow some form of access to justice for what happened.

The GDPR: the law on your side

The GDPR is a vital tool to not only protect information and prevent breaches from taking place, but it is also there for people to use in the event that something has gone wrong. The GDPR can entitle the victim of a data breach to recover compensation for any distress or losses that have been suffered. As such, in a case like that which we have referenced above, in which sensitive employment information was exposed, the GDPR can allow the victim of such an incident to claim compensation.

Organisational policies and procedure failures – data protection

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