HR knows, and everyone in our department knows how to contact each other outside of work. I have had to call people to deal with work-related issues on the weekends.
One day a few years ago I showed up at work, speech slurring, barely able to walk, and while my co-workers called an ambulance to take me to the hospital (I think I was in shock from kidney stone pain) my boss realized they had no emergency contact number for me, so they couldn’t get ahold of Ivylad. That changed soon after…we got everyone’s address, home phone, and emergency contact info.
I find the practice of insisting on private information outside the shroud of HR deplorable. There is nothing short of a nuclear disaster that would require MOST people to have to be available 24/7 to a supervisor or co-worker. If your job requires you to be available, then it’s your employer’s responsibility to provide you with a cell phone/pager/whatever to contact you…not your personal phone or address.
I’m an insurance adjuster and as such, I don’t always make people happy (go figure). Many years ago I worked for an office who had that proverbial “Contact List” hanging on their office walls. I was a remote employee so they had both my home and office numbers listed. A not-so-pleasant client called and the chippy that answered the phone gave him my home phone number rather than my work line.
After several phone calls, me bitching, and ultimately changing my home number, it was finally resolved. I declared then I would never, ever provide that information to an employer (with the exception of HR, of course) again.
Those that insist on it get bogus information. I will typically use an old number so that if I am ever called on the carpet, I have some shred of plausible deniability.
In that same vein, I also obviously have an unlisted phone number. One year I discovered my full name, address, and home telephone number published in one of those City Directory publications (not the phone book but an independent publication). I called them to complain and found that they most likely got the information from one of my neighbors as they canvas neigborhoods to gather their info. Damn I was pissed.
And Ivylass, why couldn’t your boss simply contact HR and ask them to locate your hub? It still makes no sense to me that your boss and co-workers should have this info.
I don’t think she thought of that at the time. We don’t publish the info outside the department, and I’ve only had to call people maybe half a dozen times outside of work hours in my eleven years of employment. I can see where someone in a sensitive field may not want their home info for all the world to see, but I don’t see anything wrong with sharing it amongst a department.
That said, I am reachable via a company-provided pager. I have also been called at home, but that’s part of my job…sometimes I need to answer questions and resolve issues outside of work hours. But my cell phone number is not public knowledge at work, since it’s mine, not the company’s.
My department is subsea oil production engineering, and sometimes it is necessary for one of us to come in to take care of a “rig-down” situation.
We all have a printout of everyone’s contact info. Nobody ever calls me, so it’s not that big a deal. Plus I have caller ID on my cell phone.
Seriously, it was very helpful when Hurricane Ike hit and we didn’t know the status of our building. And I’ve needed to know people’s phone numbers when I’m trying to call in “sick” or other emergency and it’s outside of business hours.
Everyone has my mobile number and email. That’s enough. Of course, all calls to my home phone are for my wife, but still I like to keep at least a tiny shred of having a personal work life seperation
All of my co-workers have each others personal cell numbers. I work private security and we are a fairly close knit department. Pretty much anything we don’t want to say over the PTT radio while working we’ll call the person’s cell (usually some inappropriate we don’t want management to hear). Sure it uses our own cell phone minutes, but seeing as our company won’t even provide us an OSHA certified office (no proper ventilation) I somehow doubt we are going to get paid-for cell phones.
