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Workplace Privacy - IBM Hot, Lilly Not
Brahmastra writes "Reuters has posted an article about the best and worst companies for workplace privacy, passing on information from the forthcoming issue of Wired Magazine, and IBM comes out on top. How does your workplace compare?" According to the summary, Eli Lilly was rated "the most notorious Big Brother boss", after "...its invasive background checks of workers after Sept. 11, 2001, some of which led to dismissals."
At least they're an equal opportunity privacy violator, as happy to spill the beans on their customers as their employees. People just have no respect for corporate consistency these days.
Disclaimer: I no longer, but once did work for Big Blue
Of course they can't spy on you, you are't allowed to do anything. FACT: Leaving a single penny (or any change) in your desk at IBM is considered a security violation because someone seeing it may make them want to steal it, and they wish to keep an honest person honest.
Ford and Sears aren't based in California or Europe, but have decided to use their data-protection laws as a model, even though they don't have to and could be much bigger wangs if they wanted.
Frankly, I'm not surprised a major drug company scrutinizes it's employees more closely than Sears does.
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Remember when IBM was The Man? Not as in "You The Man", but as in "You've sold out to The Man, man!" The Evil Empire? Big, corporate, bad guys? Now, they love Linux, they don't snoop on employees, they fight SCO-style crap, and so on? When did they get all nice-nice?
It was either that or die, as I recall. They didn't have the greatest of times in the dot-boom.
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Not to troll or anything, but after Bush Sr. left the CIA in '77, he became director of Eli Lilly.
I work for IBM which is why this will be anonymous. IBM may be fine as long as you only work at an IBM office but the majority of their workforce is in the field and IBM will bend over backwards for clients no matter how agregious their policies. For instance I work as a field tech and one of our clients for Point Of Sales equipment is GAP Inc. Well the Gap and their other retail stores has a policy of routinely searching the bags and persons of their employees as they leave the store. We field techs were told that we were to submit to these same procedures and that we should not raise any complaints about it! I told my boss and my dispatcher not to assign me to any of these calls because I would refuse to submit. I can't imagine being forced to submit to that every day. Hell I just walk past the idiot security guys at places like Best Buy. I will not allow them to assume I am a crook for shopping or working at their stores.
I completely, totally, and utterly disagree with the above. I work at IBM now, and I can promise you there are very firm policies in place about not monitoring employee activities without a good cause and serious management oversight.
If you do something obviously stupid, and people see and complain, you will get looked at. But remember, if someone is doing something like looking a p0rn at work and the workplace doesn't take action, then the employer becomes liable for creating a "hostile" workplace.
Contrary to a lot of public percerption, IBM is very liberal. The phrases "open-door policy" and "an equal day's work for an equal day's pay" both were coined by Watson. We've recognized same-sex unions for years, had company anti-discrimation policies long before it was the expected thing to do. I know I sound like a raving fanboy, and I'll be the first to admit that IBM also has its share of large company bureaucratic BS, but the important things which make my job pleasant on a human level are always done well.