Five situations in which you want to turn the head

By Tanya Andrianova, Senior Vice President, HR & Legal, DataArt (London)



Sometimes inadvertently spoken word or click can violate the confidentiality agreement, guarded by months. But in order to avoid trouble and not to substitute your company and customers, it is enough to think for just one minute.



1. When you go to the consulate to get a visa or pass passport control at the entrance, especially in the United States, be prepared for detailed inquiries about what you do. The answer “I am a project manager” may not satisfy the border guards. You can clarify exactly what PM is doing in your company, and then ask what you will do at your client’s office. Here for many, especially those who do not speak English very often, there is danger. The statement that you are going to “work” or “do the same as you always do” for your border guard is very much like an attempt to violate immigration laws - the work and business visa are not the same thing, so the verb to work worth the time to forget. It is better to say that you are going to negotiate with a client - because of this, on business trips and go.

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2. Probably, everyone has already heard that it is not worth checking in at the offices of clients and being photographed against their logos. However, practice shows that it is always better to remind about it again. Especially if you are not sure whether it is possible to publicly name the name of this client. There are cases when someone from the customer team designates you as a colleague in your account on social networks. Formally, there is no trouble. But client lawyers can potentially see a breach of confidentiality here, which could damage our reputation. No one should consider you an employee of a foreign company where you did not work.



3. If you want to put a screenshot of the client project in your social networks, in the depths of a close professional community or add it to your portfolio, you will have to suppress the temptation, as well as the temptation to place the client’s name, project name and development details in your resume. Before sharing your successes, you need to clarify whether there is a confidentiality agreement between the client and your company. Therefore, the most calm and correct option is to find out from your lawyers whether it is possible in the future to add pictures from one or another project to our history.



4. Everyone ever sent a letter to the wrong person. It is easy to make a mistake and choose in the address book of some wrong "John from the bank". Take your time with the answer, make sure that you send the letter to the correct recipients. Especially if the letter contains confidential information. If you send a document to Excel, make sure that on the second and third sheets you do not have a full list of customers or a salary list of employees - have you ever received such documents from partners? So you know, invoice quieter send in pdf.



5. Making contracts, use blank templates. We are sure that you have them, and you, of course, have been repeatedly asked to take these documents as a basis. Sometimes it may seem that it is easier to take a ready-made agreement, which you signed only last week, and just change the details of the counterparty in it. But you can be sure, in this case, sooner or later, in one of the points will remain the data of the previous customer. Moreover, the experience of obtaining such contracts from their own vendors shows: most often they forget to make changes just to the place where the signatures of the parties are intended.