Employee Data Deserves the Same Care as Customer Data

Here's a gap I see everywhere: teams guard customer data fiercely and treat employee data casually.

HR records. Performance notes. Badge swipe logs. Wellness program signups. All of it deeply personal, and all of it increasingly fed into AI tools for hiring, scheduling, and "productivity insights" — often with less care than the company gives its marketing email list.

Your colleagues' data deserves the same discipline: collect only what's needed, keep it only as long as needed, limit who sees it, and be honest about how it's used. Run the same five-question check you'd run for any customer-facing project. The people in the building next to you are data subjects too.

If you wouldn't do it to a customer, don't do it to a coworker.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.