[Translation] Office confidentiality: where is the line that should not be crossed

Let's face it: visiting non-work sites from your workplace is a common occurrence. At least, for those who are not deprived of the opportunity to do it. But do you know that bosses can follow your adventures?

On the one hand, modern Big Data analysis tools help large companies to be more productive by providing employees with daily data that is useful in their work. On the other hand, employers are almost certainly tempted to collect some information about the employees themselves. In an era of rapid digital transformation, such companies can monitor not only the habits of customers, but also the behavior of their own staff.
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This is the current reality. Companies endowed with Big Data processing tools are increasingly turning their gaze inward. Do they at the same time limit the confidentiality at work? - You decide.



YOUR HABITS IN THE NETWORK: ALMOST A READY MATERIAL FOR INTERCEPT

In 2003 (read “in the absence of iPhones, Twitter and Hippchat ”), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published a review of legal and statistical information on employees who used corporate e-mail and Internet access tools under the heading “ Be Careful, Employers and Employees! ". But don't get the US government wrong. It meant that employees should be informed that employers have a wide range of rights and authority to track and extract data from the channels they provide, and employers should understand that they must ensure that there is nothing illegal in the traffic of their networks .

Then and now, the courts took the side of employers who took measures against workers who were engaged in something other than normal site walking and messaging. Despite all calls for privacy in the workplace.

What about monitoring sites visited by employees and reading emails? Do employers monitor your use of certain keywords, mood changes, and periods of high work intensity or lull? This happens, but so far more often in the forefront. For example, the IBM Security Intelligence solution is capable of grinding the annual volume of email and browser traffic to identify “ disgruntled employees ”. The Wall Street Journal gives an example:

“The company can analyze the e-mail of an employee who expresses a positive attitude towards the manager at work, but reveals that“ when talking with a partner or strangers, the mood becomes slightly different, ”says Mr. Byrd. “This picture, combined with other factors, can lead to the fact that an employee will be taken note of for further analysis by IT professionals.”

YOUR EFFICIENCY AND HABITS: READY TO OUTSTAND IF IF BOSS NEEDS

Have you heard of ActivTrak ? This is a monitoring service that employers can use to track your online activities and even get the contents of your screen. Another example is AgileTrac , which is trying to help doctors manage time more productively and ideally reduce waiting time to zero. And all the information about employees that ActivTrak could not collect was collected by Sociometrics' RFID badges : your location, interaction with clients and other employees, the volume and tone of your speech and many other useful trifles. As noted by the representatives and management of Sociometrics , badges with chips are never issued in secret, and the data are usually provided in a generalized format for all employees, rather than as individual reports for each day.

What is it: a violation of employee confidentiality or the legal right of the employer?

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND FORUMS: ALL MEANS ARE GOOD

Suppose you are a former sales manager with a technical bias and are eager to make a career leap into programming. You persistently comprehended all the necessary knowledge, but you have nothing to boast of “on paper” or in the form of experience. Fortunately, for people like you, there is the Gild Score service, ready to measure the intangible assets of your personality, your desire and deep interest in technology, as well as face you with the right employer.

However, this is the bright side of employment with the help of social networks. The flip side is, of course, a loss of employment opportunities or promotions if you are not active enough on the Web. Your Facebook posts do not give the impression that you are thinking about your craft on the weekends. You do not answer questions in Quora, do not blog and do not share new posts on LinkedIn. Of course, at work you give thoughtful advice and make informed decisions, but are you judged by your competence on your network activities at an inopportune time? Does this violate workplace privacy?

The good news is that most employers, still, are much more concerned about your personal qualities ( and your answers to high-tech questions ) than about your online profile. And you can at least keep your created profiles as personal, as closed as possible - in most states, employers are not allowed to require passwords from you.

ANALYTICS AND HUMAN FACTOR

Companies like Google could extremely surprise the world, having the data that they can gather about their well-connected, easily-monitored employees on their gigantic campus. “Could” is the key word. Instead, Google distributes bikes to employees, feeds them with cakes and croissants, and tries to make sure that the meeting time suits all the participants.

As noted in the review of trends Big Data, conducted by the magazine Atlantic :

“... with all the technological enthusiasm of Google, their approach is still deeply human. A real, live person views every resume received by the company. Decisions on hiring are made by the committee and, to a large extent, are based on opinions formed in the process of conducting structured interviews. ”

In addition, at a time when many companies became more active and began to evaluate employees not only by the content of their resume, for whom does the right to make the final management decision remain? Companies continue to hire people to make decisions, manage and operate, even in the era of Big Data. The human factor allows us to see trends that nothing else sees. And people know that a firm invading confidentiality at their workplace — justifiably or not — is not the one they would like to work for.

What do you think about workplace privacy? Where is the line that an employer should not cross?