Some are wondering why they are being contacted at their private email

At Griffith U, Ian Glendon is contacting former staff and continuing employees in different jobs about their experience of leaving/moving positions since January 2020. There are 900 who departed and 150 who switched.

In an email to people in the pool, Adjunct Aspro Glendon (he retired December 2019), explains the purpose of his project is to, “give voice to those GU staff who were most affected, whose experiences might broadly represent those of staff throughout the Australian university sector, and to some extent of others whose lives have been particularly affected by the COVID pandemic through changes to their employment status.”

He asks them to write an anonymous “personal narrative describing their own experience.” He plans to publish an analysis of what people write.  “My hope is that even if your recent experience was not entirely positive, there may be some catharsis in writing about it, plus knowing that it will be transmitted to GU management as part of a collective voice.”

And he will provide his report to GU management, which has, “expressed interest in learning more about the impact of 2020-21 departures and redeployments from an independent analysis of multiple personal perspectives, I hope that they will take account of your collective experiences in future HR decisions.”

The university is certainly assisting, providing personal email contacts for former staffers, without, at least in some cases, asking permission.

Which raises a research question in itself –  can GU use private emails in this way?

According to GU, it can indeed. The university’s Privacy Plan states its Ethics Committee must approve “collecting or using personal information in research” which Aspro Glendon sought and was granted. And it specifies a range of uses for personal information, including, “to ensure effective general HR and business administration.”

The university also points to the Queensland Privacy Act (2009) which allows personal information collected for one purpose to be used for another if, “the use is necessary for research, or the compilation or analysis of statistics, in the public interest”  https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/act-2009-0 (Schedule Three, IPP Ten, 1f i).