Ethical Technology: Is Your Business Making Promises You Can’t Keep

April 20, 2020

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Deloitte, Tech Republic, and Harvard Business Review have each reported that a leading concern for business in 2020 is ethical technology. The practice of managing personal data has now reached every aspect of business and affects every employee and client. With the mix of more data requests and headlines reporting data breaches and security risks, it’s only natural that people will expect complete transparency when it comes to their data. Are you entirely transparent with employees? Can you be 100% sure?

Employee data collection

From the moment an employee (or contractor) researches your team, their data is collected. Websites frequently warn visitors of cookies and offer to share the data collected, but do you have an actual process in place for sharing these details with visitors? Many companies don’t.

 

Who has access to employee data?

Once accepted as an employee, personal data will continue to be collected by HR, payroll, and almost every other department within the organization. If your company has a process in place for dealing with privacy, data collection, and storage, then you may be able to make statements such as “your private data will never be sold or shared,” but can you guarantee such a thing?

Without strict processes, there is no way of ensuring privacy – or even basic security – to your employees’ data. For example, when employee data is shared with potentially dozens of other organizations – such as payroll, insurance, and 3rd party software providers – it’s fair to assume that your company has no process in place to regulate their use of your employee’s data.

 

How to ensure employee data security

First, companies should never make absolute promises to data collection. The data collection methods are diverse and proliferating. The threat of external sources is real and should not be denied. Instead, companies should aim to be transparent about all data collection and put processes in place to ensure the safe transfer of data, as well as regulations on what may, or may not, happen with data throughout the employee lifecycle.

 

What can you do to address employee data security?

At Tech One IT, we expect ethical technology to become a hot topic for employees as they make career decisions. To make sure you are ready, implement a data security process, and begin the work towards becoming an ethical employer by reaching out to Tech One IT. We have the technology resources needed to get your business on the right path, without any disruption to your business.

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