Data your bosses may hold on you

Your employer possibly has more facts about you than you realise.

If that information can be easily retrieved, it must be made available to an employee for checking, correcting and, if desired, copying. This right extends to any video or audio recordings.

Personal performance appraisals must be made available unless they were made by a third party outside your employer's organisation.

If personal information cannot be made available in the form requested, employees must be told why.

Information used to justify a demotion or dismissal can be stored by your employer for 90 days, the period in which a personal grievance case can be raised. This can be longer if you get an extension to the 90-day period.

An employee does not need to disclose a reference from a third party if that reference was provided confidentially.

When using a computer, be aware that the documents you delete don't go anywhere. All you have done is signalled that those sections of the computer's hard disk are now available to be written over. But the amount of storage available in even small computers means you may never fill that disk space and everything you have deleted is still sitting there waiting to be discovered. Programs are available which write junk data over deleted information.