Sharing our lives with our employers: at what cost?

Jo Faragher

News this week that workers would be happy for their employer to monitor their social media activity in return for a better deal shows just how the separation between our ‘work selves’ and our home lives is blurring all the time.

PwC’s wide-ranging report The Future of Work: A Journey to 2022, found that monitoring employee data will rise hugely over the next seven years, with younger people far more open to sharing their personal data.

We already see this in the recruitment process, with some employers offering social media interaction with their brand 24/7, or asking potential candidates to share aspects of themselves on social networking sites as a means to build up relationships before they even apply. Many employers have even used social media sharing as the basis for successful recruitment campaigns, typically with graduates.

But what might this appetite for sharing mean if a candidate or employee was not happy to publicise their life in that way, or they were less extrovert so didn’t have much to ‘shout’ about? Would they fall out of favour? Employers will need to consider the implications for all employees, of whatever personality type or generation, if they’re going to pull together data in this way.

PwC argues that employers will be able to analyse the data from employees’ social media interactions to predict things like performance issues or to keep an eye on retention, in much the way retailers observe what we do on Facebook and Twitter and present us with tailored advertising.

So imagine if that offhand comment about a tough day at work was taken out of context – could an employer assume there was an engagement issue? Perhaps someone just had a bad day and wanted to vent. Within reason, employees should have the freedom to do this without being judged.

The key here is that small bytes of data and snippets of social media conversation are not taken out of context like this; that this data, if organisations choose to collect it, is used to form part of a bigger picture of someone’s overall commitment to work, their performance, and their potential.

Used in this way – rather than as a stick to beat someone with – there could be real value in social sharing data.