Framework

Five conditions for workplace analytics

The question it answers

Before rolling out tools that track or analyse staff data, what conditions must senior leaders and HR managers meet for the practice to be legitimate?

Origin
Palm, 2009; Fairfield and Engel, 2015; Nissenbaum, 2010; EU, 2016
Diagram type
Decision flow
Level of analysis
Firm
Topics
AI for leadersData & analytics
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Diagram

Five conditions for workplace analytics

  1. 1Can employees opt out at no cost (free consent)?Offer a cost-free opt-out.
  2. 2Are purposes and consequences clearly explained (informed consent)?Explain purpose, scope and the possibility of inference.
  3. 3Is data used only in the context and for the purpose agreed, and kept secure (contextual integrity)?Limit purpose and minimise data.
  4. 4Does a consenting person's choice expose or harm those who did not consent?If so: bring all employees into the decision.
  5. 5Is there a collective process to avoid coordination failure (privacy as a public good)?Set up a joint decision mechanism.
May be deployed; still favour privacy where it trades off against efficiency.

Pitfalls

Pitfall

Treating individual consent as enough; ignoring the dependency asymmetry between worker and employer.

Sources

References

Listed A–Z by author surname, Harvard style. A source with a DOI links to https://doi.org/…; one without links to its page or says plainly that it has no DOI.

  1. European Parliament and Council (2016) Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation). Official Journal of the European Union.No DOIeur-lex.europa.euSource page
  2. Fairfield, J.A.T. and Engel, C. (2015) ‘Privacy as a public good’, Duke Law Journal, 65(3), pp. 385–457.No DOIscholarship.law.duke.eduSource page
  3. Nissenbaum, H. (2010) Privacy in context: technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.doi:10.1515/9780804772891Source page
  4. Palm, E. (2009) ‘Securing privacy at work: the importance of contextualized consent’, Ethics and Information Technology, 11(4), pp. 233–241.doi:10.1007/s10676-009-9208-8Source page