Q: An employee made the following request when he handed in his resignation:

“I would appreciate it if you would make my personal, medical and training records available by my final work day.”

Please advise on the following:

• Would personal information include performance appraisals and written warnings, and are we required to hand them over?
• Are medical records to be given? The company paid for medicals for various reasons, including assessing employees for project work and workers’ compensation premiums.
• Are we obligated to hand over training records? These included company-paid and company-assessed training, and external assessments also paid for by the company.

A: Personal information could potentially refer to any information provided by the employee during their employment. The Privacy Act 1998 (Cth) (Privacy Act) exempts private sector employers from having to comply with it when handling employees’ personal information if this is directly related to their employment. Accordingly, you would not be under any obligation to provide this to the employee if you are covered by the Privacy Act. This would also likely extend to any medical records.

If training records are externally recognised, you may consider providing the employee with some of these records, e.g. certificate of completion.

Please note: The answer is correct at the time of publishing. Be aware that laws may change over time. Refer to Privacy and data protection for current advice.