Share calendar details request from manager's manager

Question

My manager's manager just sent all his teams an email to ask us to open our Outlook calendars to him. Our Outlook calendar should only contain events relevant to our job, no personal life.

Opening a calendar means that he/she will be available to see the title of our events/meetings and their location.

Is this legal?

Context: France, the company is a multinational, our team is about 60 people worldwide

Update: By default, all the people in our big enterprise company are able to see the calendar availability of every other employee, but they cannot see the title and the location. They can only see that you are 'busy'

Answer 1

Is this legal?

If legality is the primary concern, this should be asked in law stack exchange.

However, if the question is more about the practice, opening up the calendar to other employees and managers is not unheard of and since you already understand that it's only for the company use, as long as it is visible to only company employees, I do not see a concern there.

Your manager (and manager's manager, and so forth) is responsible for managing your time, and having a look at your calendar is one of the easiest ways to do some of that work. If anyone is not using the calendar booking to steal time (useless meetings / unnecessary meeting bookings etc), there's nothing wrong in having an open calendar.

Personal example: In our team, we have calendars visible to whole team and manager (+1) and Business Unit head (+2) level.

Answer 2

Is this legal?

Why would it not be?

You just said it doesn't include anything personal and work related things only. If you're at work and clocked in/supposed to be working, your manager has every right to know where you are at all times never mind your managers manager.

They're paying you to do what they require. Managers need to manage their employees and resources in order to get a job done, how can they do that without knowing when you're free, what work you're doing and when you're doing it.

Answer 3

Perfectly legal and widely used practice, at least in the UK - makes easier for managers to look after your time and schedule meetings. Also, find you in the big offices if there is need.

Answer 4

This is almost certainly legal unless you're in a company that needs to comply with certain data protection regulations and the calendars contain protected data.

As to whether or not it's a good idea, why might it not be a good idea? Companies vary in how open they are with information within the company, how well they need to secure certain kinds of information, and how they do that. Especially in smaller companies that are either not dealing with a lot of data whose exposure could cause significant loss, there may be no serious issue with everybody in the company being able to see everything everybody else's calendar. Even in larger companies, moving towards more openness is a trend, though it's arguable how popular it is. For example, one of the design goals of team communication tools like Slack is to better expose conversations that had previously been hidden in e-mail, allowing someone not originally involved in an exchange to join a channel and see the full history of that exchange.

From your question it sounds as if you haven't really analyzed what information is in your calendars and what kind of problems could be caused by certain people seeing it. Problematic situations might include:

1. In a hospital, someone not allowed to access particular patient data being able to see that a certain doctor is meeting a certain patient. This would be an exposure of patient medical information, since you could guess things about the patient's medical conditions from that.

2. Someone not involved in the sales process being able to see that a salesperson is meeting with a certain company. It is often wise to keep quiet that a sale to a particular company is in progress lest competitors get wind of it and work to disrupt that sale.

So what information is in the calendars in question that poses some sort of risk if your manager's manager knows that information? This situation sounds to me as if it shouldn't be an issue at all, unless data protection regulations are involved. A manager well above you but still directly above you is usually considered trustworthy enough (except in very sensitive situations) that exposing to him what you're doing should not be an issue.

Opening your calendar to other employees at your level or below, or managers in a different part of the company, might be less wise. But even that (again, in the absence of data production regulation issues) is a business decision.

One thing you should do is inform your manager of this request, unless your manager's manager specifically requested you not do so. Your manager can raise the issue with his manager if he has any problem with this that needs to be worked out.

Answer 5

My manager's manager just sent all his teams an email to ask us to open our Outlook calendars to him.

This sounds like a perfectly reasonable and ordinary request. These are work events scheduled with company equipment and held on company time.

As a general rule, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy with your work computer if that's what you're concerned about.

Our Outlook calendar should only contain events relevant to our job, no personal life.

It's completely reasonable to expect that you'll use company-issued equipment primarily for business purposes.

Opening a calendar means that he/she will be available to see the title of our events/meetings and their location. Is that legal?

Of course it is. Why would it be illegal for your boss's boss to know the title and location of your work meetings?

Answer 6

Local laws will obviously vary, but I know in the US, generally any information and messages related to work-based email or calendaring is the property of the employer, and there's no particular requirement that certain managers, HR, or other privileged staff need even tell you that they are going to access that material before doing so.

With this in mind, I think the only serious question here is if your manager's manager is in a role appropriate to be accessing that information, or if they have the authority to make the request they've made.

Barring that, or some provision in the GDPR or something, I don't really see how the request is even a major problem. In this day and age there's no reason to be using your work email/calendar system for your personal appointments, though it's totally reasonable to block out time for lunch or other events where you will genuinely be out of the office during work time. Whatever the end goal, it is probably within their rights to view and analyze this information, and I would be surprised if they had not already been doing so if they are that interested in it.

Answer 7

With the others on the topic of "is it legal" - a lawyer would know better, but yes it likely is. With the others on whether this is something to worry about as well. This may have been a request but I can't imagine they even need your permission, IT staff would be able to change your settings or make events visible to management anyways.

If you are intending to hide something from your managers, I would suggest using services not directly controlled by your employer. A personal Google, Apple, Microsoft account, specific apps, etc.

Answer 8

Opening a calendar means that he/she will be available to see the title of our events/meetings and their location.

The only reasons this could be a problem are :

• An event or meeting is taking place which you are involved in and explicitly should not be known by your manager's manager. For example a meeting with HR about them.

• There are meetings your immediate boss or HR are entitled to know but which are considered private. Perhaps a medical appointment or some confidential reason.

I would suggest checking company policy on this with HR. It may be that this manager is trying to find out e.g. who was talking to HR "behind their back" or something like that. It won't do any harm to check if they're allowed to be doing this (or possibly even not supposed to do it for some policy reason).

Be discrete checking this.

Update: By default, all the people in our big enterprise company are able to see the calendar availability of every other employee, but they cannot see the title and the location. They can only see that you are 'busy'

It's not always appropriate for any manager above you to be able to see exactly who you are meeting for reasons I have explained. I personally find it a little odd that a manager would do this, not least because it bypasses your line manager, who you actually report to. It need not be sinister, but it's rather pointless having layers of management if people are going to e.g. micro-manage multiple layers.

Our Outlook calendar should only contain events relevant to our job, no personal life.

Someone has already commented that this is an ideal which in practical terms can be broken without trying to deliberately by all the automation smart phone and tablet have. Rules like this are often made by people who have no idea how modern technology works, or are inherited from a time when the technology was quite different.

In practical terms if you need to flag you are unavailable because you have to e.g. leave by a certain time on a particular day, then it's quite useful to have that unavailability flagged in a work calendar so people don't try and stick a meeting (or whatever) in that slot.

Answer 9

This may be a little controversial, but the biggest problem I see is the "no private information" issue. Some things are personal, but affect work time, and an overly strict interpretation of this is problematic.

• Those who have arranged working hours to meet childcare for example may need private stuff in there. e.g. 2 nights a week I'm out of the door at 17:00, no exceptions unless planned in advance. No I can't squeeze in a 15 minute meeting - I'll miss my train and be 1/2 hour late for pickup.

• Medical and other critical personal appointments may lead to unusual break times, all fully approved at a local level and within policy, but higher-ups need to respect this.

I would say this is relevant to work, so put it in, but I've met managers who would say that's using the work calendar to plan your personal life - and they tend to be the same managers who want immediate access to every detail of your calendar.