I’ve got a secret!
Remember secrets, maybe when you were a kid in the school yard, some information that someone had but no one was really sure whether there was anything to it. Yes there were whispers and maybe laughter and furtive glances protecting the secret.
It was affirmed by the cry: “Don’t tell anybody!”
People have secrets. Companies have secrets.We know this as lawyers and client confidentiality protects those secrets, but what I am talking about is secret information in your workplace.
Do you know of any secrets?
If you review your employment agreement, you will most likely see sections of it that mention “Nondisclosure” and “Confidentiality.” Someone explained that certain things were “proprietary” to the company and that it could not be shared.
Keeping a secret is hard work, it was when you were a child– being cajoled or interrogated by people trying to get the secret out of you — and today in business it is just as hard. But what if your secret isn’t a secret at all?
What makes something a secret? How is something confidential?
It takes an effort by the company to maintain a secret. By and large there is not a lotof attention given to the practices and procedures necessary to maintain your secret. Many people come to me wising to honor their employment agreement and see such terms as “confidentiality” and “proprietary” and want to abide by it, but in fact the company they worked for did not keep anything a secret. There were no procedures, passwords, security systems or anything that hinted that a customer list or anything else for that matter was a secret.
At the same time we advise companies who have secrets that need assistance in producing the effort to protect their information as secret.
Companies especially smaller ones that may have printed an employment agreement form off the Internet are vulnerable here. Review your company secrets this year as the economy heats up and employees look elsewhere employers may lose some valuable competitive advantages.