DATA OF EMPLOYEES RETURNING FROM SICK LEAVE: UNLAWFULNESS OF PROCESSING ACCORDING TO THE DATA PROTECTION AUTHORITY
With provision no. 390 of 10 July 2025, the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante della Privacy) ruled on a company practice of subjecting employees returning to work after a period of illness, injury or hospitalization to personal data collection and processing procedures (such as interviews and questionnaires) aimed at assessing their mental and physical health in order to facilitate their return to work.
According to the Authority, in implementing this practice, the employer does not comply with the principles set out in privacy legal framework if:
- there is no adequate, transparent and appropriate information on data treatment provided to the employees concerned (violation of the principle of transparency);
- there is no legitimate legal basis for the treatment including data that could reveal the state of health (violation of the principle of lawfulness);
- the data collected in this way are not relevant to the employer's responsibilities and some of them are already known to the employer (violation of the principle of minimization);
- the documentation created in this way remains available to the company for a period of time that is disproportionate to the stated purposes (violation of the principle of storage limitation).
This reasoning led the Authority to impose an administrative fine of €50,000 (in addition to ordering the deletion of the data collected and prohibiting its use) against a company for unlawfully processing the personal data of employees because it subjected them – as a matter of company practice – to “return-to-work interviews” following a period of absence due to illness, accident or hospitalization. This interview consisted of a questionnaire completed manually by the manager of the employee interviewed, with the responses analyzed by the human resources department, which, together with the manager and/or the competent doctor, assessed any actions to protect the employee's health and job placement.
