Does Your Boss Own Your Relationships?
Posted by Ben Worthen
Most workers know that the information they collect and create on the job belongs to their employers. But what about the professional relationships they build?
Businesses are increasingly turning to software that searches through employees’ emails and calendars to determine not just what relationships they have, but the depth of those of relationships, according to today’s Journal. For example, if the software saw that an employee exchanged several emails and had a lunch meeting with someone, it would conclude that the two had a close relationship. Coworkers can find out who in a company has these relationships and take advantage of them to make a sales pitch, recruit a potential employee or just solve a problem.
Think of it as corporate-imposed social networking. One problem many businesses face is that employees willingly share this information about who they know, but they do it on Web sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. It makes sense for a business to try to keep control of this information, or at least try to recreate its own version of it for workers to take advantage of. And as many people have observed, email may be the best untapped social network out there.
Of course, on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook the individual decides what information to share and what information to keep private. A business can choose to install the monitoring software with restrictions that let workers hide some relationships or force searchers to ask the relationship owner for permission before contacting someone. But it doesn’t have to.
It’s easy to see how this benefits a business as a whole and workers who don’t have these relationships. But it could come at the expense of workers who have gone to great lengths to build these relationships. In fact, in many professions – journalism, for example, but many others – these relationships can make or break a career.
My boss doesn’t own my relationships because he is in love with me. He does what I tell him to do - the advantages of being a lady.
If the organization where I worked tried to mine my professional relationships, I would quit. Period. Plenty of places to work without those issues.
What software is it that this article is talking about? I am interested to learn which companies are going through employees e-mails to determine what relationships they have with people, or doing the same with their online presence, not least of all because if this is not written into their terms of employment then this is a serious breach of privacy. Without adequate permission from a staff member to do this, there could be serious consequences for any employer.
Ian Hendry
http://www.wecando.biz
Note the lack of acceptance of CRM packages such as salesforce.com or Seibel products by many sales professionals. Top performers in sales will be reluctant to load their relationship data in here b/c it transfers the ownership of that information to the company. The additional value the software gives to the sales person isn’t worth it to them - who stands to benefit, only the company. Good luck chuck!
DON’T WE HAVE ENOUGH SPYING IN THE WORKPLACE? REALLY, Executives need to focus on managing, not spying and firing.
WSJ.com's business-technology blog focuses on the technology that businesses use -- the hardware, software, services and know-how that can make or break a business -- and on the people who deploy that technology. The lead writer is Ben Worthen, who joined The Wall Street Journal from CIO Magazine. The blog also includes contributions from other reporters and editors at the Journal, WSJ.com and Dow Jones Newswires. Have a comment? Write to 
