Worker didn't follow policy for seeking permission to access folder
A British Columbia credit union had just cause to dismiss an employee who accessed another employee’s personal information without permission, the B.C. Supreme Court has ruled.
Susan Steel was hired by Coast Capital Savings, a credit union in the B.C. lower mainland headquartered in Surrey, B.C., in 1987. In 1997 she became a helpdesk analyst in Coast’s information technology (IT) department.
As a helpdesk analyst, Steel was able to access any document or file in the organization, including personal folders employees were assigned for their own use on the company network. She worked mostly unsupervised, but was only allowed to access personal folders if an employee needed technical assistance and gave permission. To obtain permission to access a personal folder, there was a set protocol to follow. Steel acknowledged and signed off on Coast’s policies regarding confidential information and was familiar with the protocol for accessing personal folders.
In July 2008, Steel’s supervisor told her he needed a document containing a list of priorities for employee parking spaces, but he was having difficulty getting in contact with the department manager who kept the file in her personal folder. Steel had helped the department manager recently and knew where the file was, so she accessed the file. However, she received a phone call and left the file open.
The department manager tried to open the document in her personal folder and found it was already in use by Steel. Since she hadn’t authorized the access, the manager called Steel’s supervisor to complain. Steel’s supervisor asked Steel about it and she told him she accessed the folder to get the file he was looking for. She said she had done nothing else with the folder and apologized for “not taking the appropriate approach to accessing the file.”
Three days later, Coast terminated Steel’s employment for breach of trust and violating its privacy policies. Coast stated it had lost confidence in her, which irreparably damaged the employment relationship. Steel contested the dismissal, arguing helpdesk staff were encouraged to solve problems on their own initiative and the misconduct wasn’t just cause for dismissal.
The court found Steel’s supervisor hadn’t requested Steel to access the document and had Steel he would speak with the department manager about it. Therefore, Steel went into the personal folder and opened the document for her own purposes, said the court. Additionally, she had left the document open and only told the supervisor she opened it when he came to investigate the complaint.
The court noted the document Steel accessed had other confidential information on it such as employees’ seniority and pay grades, including Steel’s. It was definitely a document she shouldn’t have accessed without following the formal procedure for obtaining permission, and her failure to do so was a serious breach of trust, said the court.
