I am the Director of HR for a mid-size manufacturing company. Historically, our safety team has not had access to employee information. When there is a safety incident, HR shares the appropriate information with the safety manager for that particular employee in the event the employee cannot provide this themselves. We also do not give out contact information to managers or supervisors, even if they are just asking to call an employee about coming in to cover a shift- HR contacts the employee for them.

Basically, we have always been extremely careful with employee information. I was recently asked to allow our Director of Safety to have access to our HRIS to obtain employee information in the event of an incident without needing to ask HR. I was uncomfortable with this, as every person with access to this information adds a layer of risk, and even my HR team has restricted access to particular groups (we are family owned), so it doesn't sit right to allow another department access to employee information. We landed on a report generated out of our HRIS for the Director of Safety, but the ask includes employee contact information (home address, phone number, emergency contact information, etc.).

I initially gave it the green light as this was going directly to a high-level manager, but upon further reflection, I am second-guessing. There has also been an ask for this Director to also have access to employee usernames for the HRIS to help troubleshoot with our Learning Management platform, and I shot that down immediately. Would love some feedback from other HR professionals on how they would handle this, or if you've been in a particular situation!

Thanks in advance! - Erin