Hi there!
I’ve been wondering what thoughts you have on privacy and ensuring the positive use of “people data”. As someone living in Europe, I am often surprised to see what data US employers have access to, and what things e.g. CVs usually contain there that we would never add. I’ve seen a lot of potential ways for companies to misuse information like this, and I hope to see solutions both on the data “intake” and on the “results/processing” end.
Superb question, and given we have customers across the globe, a question we hear often.
You’re right, US companies encourage and capture much more personal data about employees. But, it’s not all for evil intent, especially not with Visier and how we deploy our solutions. Let’s just pretend that a Visier customer was based in Detroit, and they perform manufacturing . Now let’s think about their workforce - probably pretty diverse from an ethnicity perspective. And let’s assume that data is captured in Visier. What could this company do in People Analytics on behalf of their employees? Imagine Pat, a person of color, transfers to an all white team. That creates a real challenge of Belonging and Inclusion for Pat, versus their prior role. And now let’s assume that Pat is a high performing employee. They’re likely not engaged [because they’re isolated and feel alone], and have a high propensity to leave the company, in search of working in an environment where they feel welcome. In Europe, we could do this with gender [which teams are all male and one female], since gender is allowed. HUGE value for retention of great talent.
Unfortunately, technology can always be used for good and for harm. Our intention and our practices with respect to how we handle employee data, secure employee data, and anonymize employee data are rigorous and very much well intentioned for our mission. But I agree with you that with great power comes great responsibility.
best,
Keith