The Worklytics Approach to Employee Privacy

Employee trust is one of your organization’s most precious assets.  Before you work with any data partner, you’ll want to evaluate how they’ll impact your employees’ trust in the organization. 

Here’s how we approach employee trust & privacy at Worklytics:

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‍Premise:  Companies Need to Understand How Work is Being Done 

We believe that teams need to understand how work is being done in order to continuously improve & prosper.

It’s our job as business leaders to grow Enterprise Value.  Data around how work is being done allows you to innovate & improve your workflow – accelerating speed-to-market, reducing operational costs, and improving employee & customer satisfaction.  

Companies with work data will beat companies who don’t have it.    

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The Challenge:  Blurred Boundaries 

In the past, leaders could visually observe the office floor to see how teams were collaborating.  But hybrid work has made it challenging to evaluate and improve how  work is getting done, now that a lot of work is being done outside the office. 

Increasingly, more and more work happens over digital tools.  As a result, there’s a growing amount of data available to help us understand how work is being done.

But the digitalization of work alongside the rise in remote work has blurred the lines between the office and home.  As a result, the boundaries between work and personal activity have become more porous and less defined.

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Worklytics Approach:  Employee-First

We believe that collaboration patterns are a trove of data that’s invaluable for understanding and improving work.   

We also believe that companies can access this data while protecting employee trust & personal privacy.  

Here’s how:

1. Transparency: 
   
   The most trusted companies are transparent with their employees.  They feel confident in their approach and spend time thoughtfully communicating the whys and hows to preemptively assuage employee concerns. 

2. Work Data Only: 
   
   Worklytics only accesses data from specified work applications [ex: Slack, work email, Salesforce].  There’s no browser plug-in or software installed.  Even if employees are using their work computer for personal purposes, Worklytics would not see any of that personal activity happening outside of work apps.

3. Strip All Content: 
   
   Here at Worklytics, we don’t analyze any content.  Undoubtedly, there could be value in analyzing emails or Slack messages to understand tone & sentiment and some of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) models are really cool.  But, right now, it’s very difficult to guarantee anonymity when you pull in content – and we believe it’s not worth the privacy risk.
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4. Pseudonymize Everything at the Source:
   
   One of our biggest differentiators is the Worklytics Privacy Proxy, which ensures that no identifiers ever leave your company’s firewall.
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5. Aggregate Level, No Individual Identifiers:
   
   We’re an Employee Sensing tool; Worklytics does not provide Employee Surveillance. Our goal is to help you understand how work is getting done in your organization – we do not monitor individual behavior.
   
   To ensure the data is actionable while still being anonymous, we recommend that you aggregate up to the team level that your organization uses with employee listening surveys, most often groups of 5+ people.

Communicating with Your Employees

The best way to maintain employee trust is to tell employees what you’re doing and share back the results so they understand the impact this analysis has on improving their workflow.  

Here's a sample email script that you might use. 

Keep in mind that you’ll want to tailor your communications to account for nuances in employee roles or locations.

We suggest companies keep these 3 principles top-of-mind:

‍Articulate what you’re going to do – and what you’re not going to do.  Be explicit about what data is being analyzed and how you’re drawing a line between what’s in scope and out-of-scope.

‍Acknowledge that activity does not equal productivity.  Employee Sensing is going to help your organization understand how work is getting done and how time is being spent.  Reiterate that output (not activity) is still the metric you’ll use to evaluate employee performance.

Anticipate there may be a vocal minority of employees with some concerns.  If you offer an Opt-Out upfront, you’ll likely assuage those with fears.  You could also offer Office Hours or host a listening session to proactively surface & address any employee worries. 

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