Blogocentric Formulations

This Just In - August 8

What Your Boss Could Learn by Reading the Whole Company's Emails  
Written as part of "This Just In..."   for "Blog Harbor" 

The new industry known as "text analytics" has been making a lot of waves lately. It mostly involves the use of sophisticated algorithms to parse the actual construction of language in a collection of data. Investors, for example, can comb through dense public filings or press releases to find subtle changes in language that might give them a clue as to how a company's fortunes may be faring. If they spot unusually carefully crafted language in a statement about risk disclosures, for example, that could indicate that a company is concerned about an issue and trying to minimize it for the public. Similarly, some companies have used text analytics to scour electronic communication (email and messaging apps like Slack), where algorithms can evaluate based on the language patterns and even use of emojis how emotionally healthy its employees are.

I've long been a proponent of not putting anything on your work computer that you don't want the company to know. Keystroke loggers, remote viewing, and other capabilities allow companies to see an awful lot of what their employees put out into the electronic ecosystem. But this takes things to a whole new level that's kind of crazy when you think about it. My company uses Slack, for example, to communicate quickly with people in our rather large office. It's easy to send a direct message to someone to ask if they're in their office, or so assistants can coordinate meeting times, lunches, etc. It's also where a lot of employees, myself included, will vent when we're frustrated. We message coworkers and say things like, "Can you believe our boss just threw you under the bus in that meeting? What a jerk!" Or, "Did you see the new corporate policy from HR? Yeah, like that's actually going to fix the problem." Now imagine you get called into the CEO's office not because you called your boss a jerk or disagreed with the new HR policy... but because an algorithm determined that you're exhibiting a high amount of negativity and are therefore a negative influence on the morale of the company.

Ultimately, I'm not sure this will ever be a major privacy problem (any more than privacy is already a problem in the workplace)... like so many of the analytical tools available today, just because a company can dig into their employees' electronic communications doesn't necessarily mean they do or even have the time to monitor everything that happens without an actual issue to investigate. It would be an enormous use of resources to constantly be monitoring everything an employee emails, chats, etc. for any little thing... but it's also easy to see how this technology could be used in the context of layoffs or personnel issues to justify a whole range of actions. And that's the part of this that makes me nervous. We live in a world that's increasingly restrictive in terms of employee rights, where corporations are routinely consolidating power and pursuing wealth at all costs. Employees turnover is through the roof compared to previous generations, and I worry that technology like this could make it even easier for companies to jettison employees without fairly compensating them.

In the old days, layoffs often came with some sort of severance package and ample warning to make sure the employee had time to land on his or her feet. These days, it's not uncommon to find out you're out of a job only on the day they escort you from the building. And it's not uncommon for companies to look for ways to save money by terminating people for cause instead of laying them off. What if a disreputable company decided to save money on severance and unemployment claims by firing half its staff "for cause" rather than laying them off? They could just pull up your chat history, or run an algorithm on your emails and say, "Whoa, see right there? You're clearly disgruntled and exhibiting hostile tendencies toward that coworker of yours or the company in general. We have the right to fire you for cause with no severance or unemployment benefits."

Maybe all of this seems a little Orwellian, but with two layoffs under my belt and having worked for more than one company that has flat-out screwed its employees over in pursuit of profits, it's hard for me to imagine there won't be some enterprising company somewhere that takes all it can learn from analyzing patterns in your communication and applying it to some sort of assessment about what kind of employee you are. It's bad enough that a company can read your electronic correspondence; it's a little terrifying that there are tools out there that allow them to infer your state of mind or your level of loyalty to the company while you wrote them.