How you treat other people that you work with, work for and support (If you are in a support position.) is not confidential. If it was, then everyone would work in soundproof sealed boxes and would never have to interact with another person in their department.
As for hearing what clients say about other support desk folk. That goes with the territory. When you are supporting a client list of roughly 1500 with a support desk of 15 people. You WILL hear what certain clients think of other support staff member. That is not confidential information.
The things that were discussed with me were the cases that I had become involved in playing damage control for. Again, that precludes any kind of confidentiality.
Confidential Employee information consists of social security numbers, date of birth, age, sex, religous preference, medical information, home address, home phone numbers, names of wife and children, education, yearly reviews. That's really about it.
None of that was provided to me as that would have been breaking the law. However, discussing an event that happened, that I was brought into, that isn't confidential.
What you appear to be suggesting is that nobody in an office is allowed to formulate an opinion or take notice of anyone else in the office that they work in. I suppose that each person would just come into the office, move straight to their desk, perform their job, go to lunch, return from lunch, do their job and then leave. All without interacting with another person. There couldn't be any confidentiality issues then now could there?
Unfortunately, that's not how things work in the real world. I hope that I didn't make you paranoid, but pretty much all management teams will briefly discuss people here and there, sometimes they will say nice things about their people, sometimes they say not-so-nice things about their people. That is reality. Moving up in Corporate America is a combination of knowing your <Censored> and schmoozing management and employees. (To be honest, it is mostly a popularity contest.) |
