Access to a payslip

uriel

I wonder if anyone on here can answer a query in relation to the availability of and access to a payslip.
Under employment law - must each employee be given a payslip?

Assuming that the answer to this is yes, under GDPR/DPA rules, can an employer insist that the payslip must be sent to an employee on that employee's own personal e-mail. I have been asked this question by a friend. He works for a private company (large company). His employer used to provide payslips on a central system (where each employee logged on using their own log on so it the privacy of the payslip was ensured). However, this system has now been withdrawn and the employer is insisting that the only way they can issue a payslip is if the employee provides the employer with their personal e-mail address. This chap does not want to share his private e-mail with his employer and has requested that the payslip is sent to him by post - the employer has refused to do this. The reason he does not want to share his personal e-mail address is that there has been an incident in the last 12 months where this employees personal data was breached and was sent to an external party, without his consent. So can the employer refuse to post the payslip, refuse to accept that the mailing preference of this employee is by post. Surely there is no legal requirement for the employer to be provided with a personal e-mail address if the employee does not want to share it. Many thanks in advance

Timberrrrrrrr

Could he not set up a separate Gmail account specifically for his pay slips?

wally1990

uriel wrote: »

I wonder if anyone on here can answer a query in relation to the availability of and access to a payslip.
Under employment law - must each employee be given a payslip?

Assuming that the answer to this is yes, under GDPR/DPA rules, can an employer insist that the payslip must be sent to an employee on that employee's own personal e-mail. I have been asked this question by a friend. He works for a private company (large company). His employer used to provide payslips on a central system (where each employee logged on using their own log on so it the privacy of the payslip was ensured). However, this system has now been withdrawn and the employer is insisting that the only way they can issue a payslip is if the employee provides the employer with their personal e-mail address. This chap does not want to share his private e-mail with his employer and has requested that the payslip is sent to him by post - the employer has refused to do this. The reason he does not want to share his personal e-mail address is that there has been an incident in the last 12 months where this employees personal data was breached and was sent to an external party, without his consent. So can the employer refuse to post the payslip, refuse to accept that the mailing preference of this employee is by post. Surely there is no legal requirement for the employer to be provided with a personal e-mail address if the employee does not want to share it. Many thanks in advance

First off , I was in the opposite position before and took issue .

my payslips were going to my work address and I didn't like that because IT have access to every single program, file , email , teams messages, passwords etc I send and i felt my pay was private to myself and thus requested to stop sending it to my work address and instead got it sent to my personal email


Maybe your friend should consider that as a security issue if it goes to his work address and maybe he isn't comfortable with that

I'd rather it go to my own address as opposed to a work address that the employer / company owns

Seve OB

Does he have a work email account?
I had a few guys who refused to give me their email and they only had a central Work email account. We could send them there as the payslips were password protected.
We actually just sent them to their own line manager who printed them out and gave them to the employees.
Anyone new on the door is asked for their email account and nobody has ever refused to give it

bikeman1

An employer simply has to provide a payslip. The means of the delivery of that are entirely at the discretion of the employer.

Some print and leave in a pigeon hole, some post, some provide online access and some email.

Why any employer would agree to the posting out of a payslip because of the reason highlighted.

Just create a new email address and bingo the problem is sorted.

Set up a <company name>payslip@gmail.com account. Only use it for that. The payslip should be password protected (I imagine all software providers provide this facility).

I introduced electronic payslips in my current work. A few have held out and insist on a paper payslip - that's fine, but anyone new signs up with an employee starter form that gives an email address for their payslip.

Heart Break Kid

You have a legal right to a pay slip which can be electronic or hard copy. Read the legislation yourself but on a quick read, it does not specifically detail the exact way this should be given to the employee but from the language used, the onus seems to be on the employer.

Could you just not use your work email or request a work email address. Being honest it sounds like you’re being difficult. If you find them in breach of GDPR report them to the ombudsman.


“4.—(1) An employer shall give or cause to be given to an employee a statement in writing specifying clearly the gross amount of the wages payable to the employee and the nature and amount of any deduction therefrom and the employer shall take such reasonable steps as are necessary to ensure that both the matter to which the statement relates and the statement are treated confidentially by the employer and his agents and by any other employees.“

uriel

Many thanks to you all for your responses - on the face of it, it would appear that the simplest remedy would be to set up a new separate and specific e-mail address to be used for this purpose alone. There does not appear to be any functionality for the employees in this business to have specific and individual work e-mail addresses.
I think his reticence to comply with the employers request to receive his payslip via e-mail stems from the data breach that he has already experienced. One for further consideration and I appreciate your responses.

dartboardio

Not everyone has an email address or access to the Internet so surely its fine to post it. The employer or hr can just print and post

Hibernicis

uriel wrote: »

I think his reticence to comply with the employers request to receive his payslip via e-mail stems from the data breach that he has already experienced. One for further consideration and I appreciate your responses.

I dealt with this on a number of occasions when switching employees from paper to electronic payslips in the past, in particular where people's personal e-mail account was shared (with a spouse or other family members etc). As was already pointed out, the e-mailed payslips should be password protected, and should use a password specific/unique to the employee. If this is the case then your friend should be OK to use his personal e-mail address as the payslip password will offer an additional layer of protection in the event of someone accessing his e-mail account.

dartboardio

dartboardio wrote: »

Not everyone has an email address or access to the Internet so surely its fine to post it. The employer or hr can just print and post

Who that's out in the work force doesn't have access to the internet either at home or at work? I don't doubt they exist, but must be statistically immaterial.

listermint

dartboardio wrote: »

Not everyone has an email address or access to the Internet so surely its fine to post it. The employer or hr can just print and post

Balls they don't. Everyone has a smartphone ergo everyone has email.

Seve OB

listermint wrote: »

Balls they don't. Everyone has a smartphone ergo everyone has email.

I don’t have a smartphone and know plenty of others who don’t.

Seve OB

Seve OB wrote: »

I don’t have a smartphone and know plenty of others who don’t.

I'm guessing you've SOME access to the internet though

893bet

My pay slip comes to my email. Payslip is password protected.

dennyk

Sounds like the issue here is that the OP's "friend" has an email account, but doesn't want to share it with their employer because of concerns that their employer will not respect boundaries and will either start contacting them after hours using said email or will give out said email to a customer or other third party; that's certainly a reasonable concern. The simple solution, though, would be to set up a new free email account just for their payslips and only check it on pay day (and ignore all other messages sent to it except their pay information).

meeeeh

I don't know how legal it is but I stopped printing payslips. There are two employees who refuse to provide an email and I refuse to print them unless they specifically ask me and collect them. We used to print payslips but then they were not collected and left lying around. I'm not going to risk personal data and wage shared around because they don't like emails.

Your friend should set up an email for payslips. It's safer for him and the employer.

schmoo2k

listermint wrote: »

Balls they don't. Everyone has a smartphone ergo everyone has email.

At home he might only have a shared computer / email with wife / kids etc,

meeeeh

schmoo2k wrote: »

At home he might only have a shared computer / email with wife / kids etc,

So what. Any half decent wage programme allows password protected emails.

Tork

schmoo2k wrote: »

At home he might only have a shared computer / email with wife / kids etc,

How would that stop him from accessing his payslips?

schmoo2k

Tork wrote: »

How would that stop him from accessing his payslips?

I was thinking more that the OP might not want them to see the payslips.

dennyk

schmoo2k wrote: »

I was thinking more that the OP might not want them to see the payslips.

Even if his employer doesn't password protect them (as they should, if they're sending them to outside email accounts), OP could always set up a new email account somewhere and just not save the password for it on their home computer.

Tork

I was thinking more that the OP might not want them to see the payslips.

Unless they're standing looking over his shoulder at the time, I don't see the issue. All he has to do is make sure he doesn't download them locally or stay signed into the email account. The simplest way to deal is to bring up the private tab on his browser when accessing the webmail. Once he closes that, he won't be signed into anything.

How long does anybody spend looking at their payslips anyway? My employer uses a Web based service and I log in once a fortnight just to quickly check that everything is OK.

blindsider

Electronic payslips are (always?) password protected. To open the attachment containing the payslip, you need to enter a PIN. If the employee doesn't give the PIN to anyone, then no-one can view it.

Seems to me like the employee has internet access, they're reluctant to give their current email address. The solution, as has been suggested, is to create e.g.

seanomurchupayslip@gmail.com

It's then only used for payslips.

Jim2007

The reason he does not want to share his personal e-mail address is that there has been an incident in the last 12 months where this employees personal data was breached and was sent to an external party, without his consent.

So he is concerned about his email address, but not the rest of his data......

In bad economic times being awkward about these kinds of think is how people nominate themselves for the redundancy list.

dennyk

Jim2007 wrote: »

So he is concerned about his email address, but not the rest of his data......

I'm betting the "breach" in question was his manager or some other employee giving out his personal info to an angry and/or needy customer (in which case he'd certainly be right to be angry, and right to be wary about trusting his employer with his personal info going forward...).

Dial Hard

I will never understand why people insist on needlessly complicating things for themselves just for the sake of making some kind of point the person they're trying to make it to likely won't even notice.

Just tell him to give them an email address. As many others have pointed out, it doesn't have to be the one he uses for everything else.

For those saying it's as easy for an employer to print payslips as it is to email them, it's really not. To do it properly you need specialist printers and paper that seal the payslips as they're printed so nobody can just randomly pick one up off the printer and have a good goo.

Seve OB

Dial Hard wrote: »

I will never understand why people insist on needlessly complicating things for themselves just for the sake of making some kind of point the person they're trying to make it to likely won't even notice.

Just tell him to give them an email address. As many others have pointed out, it doesn't have to be the one he uses for everything else.

For those saying it's as easy for an employer to print payslips as it is to email them, it's really not. To do it properly you need specialist printers and paper that seal the payslips as they're printed so nobody can just randomly pick one up off the printer and have a good goo.

Not necessarily. We used to use laser payslips, but then you had to split them, box off the employer copy, then stuff the rest in envelopes. If we had the correct window envelopes it was grand, but if not, then we had to write the names in them.
PITA.

Email so handy. Though still get regular requests for copy payslips because they “never got the one for week 29 in 2019” So I must never have sent their one but everyone else got theirs!
It’s actually not as easy to email older payslips from Sage.

Strumms

In my last job after about 9 years payroll was outsourced. We originally when ‘in house ‘ got hardcopy payslips with loads of details...every deduction broken down , every bonus and OT broken down...a new boss took over and changed things to make savings and we only got an electronic payslip via an outsourced payroll company via email with about 30 % of the info...
Example ,...

Name : James Coleman
Dept : IT
Position : IT Monkey
Employee ID : AV316B

Gross Pay : 2900
Net Pay : 2400
Deductions : 500

No overtime breakdown to check if you’d been paid accurately, no columns giving a breakdown of deductions to ensure they were accurate. Payroll under this manager had begun to be erratic in its accuracy people were finding one month in three that there were errors in their pay but having to invest time and effort, not work time even though work was fûcking up, to ensure they got paid correctly... again managing your managers, laughable.

Should be law that hard copy detailed payslips with certain info are issued x days in advance of pay date.

Seve OB

Strumms wrote: »

In my last job after about 9 years payroll was outsourced. We originally when ‘in house ‘ got hardcopy payslips with loads of details...every deduction broken down , every bonus and OT broken down...a new boss took over and changed things to make savings and we only got an electronic payslip via an outsourced payroll company via email with about 30 % of the info...
Example ,...

Name : James Coleman
Dept : IT
Position : IT Monkey
Employee ID : AV316B

Gross Pay : 2900
Net Pay : 2400
Deductions : 500

No overtime breakdown to check if you’d been paid accurately, no columns giving a breakdown of deductions to ensure they were accurate. Payroll under this manager had begun to be erratic in its accuracy people were finding one month in three that there were errors in their pay but having to invest time and effort, not work time even though work was fûcking up, to ensure they got paid correctly... again managing your managers, laughable.

Should be law that hard copy detailed payslips with certain info are issued x days in advance of pay date.

Hard or electronic wouldn’t make a difference.
Outsourcing the payroll won’t make a difference 3ither, they will do as the company asks them to do.

And I stand to be corrected, but that sounds like the company was no in compliance with their obligations, and in theory, you could Go through to he stages to take them to the WRC

Strumms

Seve OB wrote: »

Hard or electronic wouldn’t make a difference.
Outsourcing the payroll won’t make a difference 3ither, they will do as the company asks them to do.

And I stand to be corrected, but that sounds like the company was no in compliance with their obligations, and in theory, you could Go through to he stages to take them to the WRC

Wouldn’t make a difference to me either if we had all the info.

The managers had a hobby of fûcking up the OT, when you got your hard copy slip a week to ten days beforehand you’d simply spot the oversight, a quick call and resolved... eslip arriving 5 days beforehand after the payrun was done, we were being told “ sure we’ll sort it out next month “