Study: Companies need to better protect employee data

01.06.2006
A study on workplace privacy found that less than half of the people surveyed believe their employers are doing a good job protecting the privacy of their personal information.

The independent study, "Americans' Perceptions about Workplace Privacy," was conducted by Elk Rapids, Mich.-based Ponemon Institute LLC, which looks at information and privacy management practices in business and government. The report, which was released yesterday, is based on 945 responses from adults across the U.S. who work for companies with at least 1,000 employees.

"We found that people for the most part don't have a lot of trust for employers in terms of personal privacy at work," said Larry Ponemon, the institute's founder and chairman. Only 437, or 46 percent, of the respondents said they "strongly agree" or "agree" that their employers are committed to protecting their privacy in the workplace, while 189, or 20 percent, said they are unsure. The remaining 319, or 34 percent, said they "disagree" or "strongly disagree" that their employers are concerned about their privacy, according to the study.

Also notable, Ponemon said, is that only 49 percent of the respondents said they have much understanding of their employers' responsibilities to them concerning their privacy at work. What that likely means is that workplace privacy policies are informal and haven't been disseminated to workers in a structured fashion, Ponemon said.

"Perhaps the organizations can do a better job of letting people know what the privacy policies are," he said. Often, any written workplace privacy policies are handed out to workers when they are hired. But the policy is included in a large packet with other documents about company benefits, where they could be forgotten, Ponemon said.

Of the 49 percent of the respondents who said they know something of their workplace privacy policies, more than one-third, or 39 percent, said they couldn't recall how they had gained that information. "That's not a good fact," Ponemon said.