And youre being very generous toward the coworker in saying she misunderstood and mistakenly misrepresented it. If you had to process the cool news, it may have been better to process with the mentor instead. I also wanted to address a couple things that jumped out at me in this part: Also, am I even allowed to bring up the fact that someone ratted me out? Another public sector worker here. And by becoming the must fanatically trustworthy discreet person. Animaniactoo is right that folks who have to manage confidential information begin to cultivate the skill of sharing without making an unauthorized disclosure. Examples that most journalists would find pretty snoozy (although journalists who cover the agency super-closely for trade publications, Politico Pro, Bloomberg Gov, etc, would still be interested): Ms_Chocaholic wrote: . Had OP not made the initial mistake and then compounded it by telling the coworker, shed still be employed. A supervisor discovers that an employee has recently downloaded thousands of pages of confidential Company billing and financial information, and e-mailed it to her personal e-mail address. I dont feel like we need that caveat though, there of course will be exceptions, but this is kinda derailing. If you told, you breached confidentiality, no matter what the other people did. The awareness that anything sent in your work email is subject to FOIA and open records requests really varies. If I were your coworker I would have done the exact same thing. Sharing HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL info. Email violations can jeopardize your job. Plenty of folks are friends in my business lobbyists, journalists, staffers you cant lose control of your impulse to share information. PRSA is an excellent suggestion! This has to be, and often is, done formally, with agreements to give something secret in advance so the journalist can prep a story for later, when its OK to share. In government, keep this confidential almost always means never share ever on pain of serious legal sanctions.. Perhaps something like the announcement of the new Amazon HQ? 2 July 2018 at 9:11PM. Mandatory reporting is a thing that exists. Thats pretty ratty behavior. I dont think you have to be Catholic.). "Yes, humor in the workplace is a fabulously invaluable thing that any workplace can benefit greatly from, but when your colleagues already feel buried under a pile of never-ending emails, adding. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act now requires employers to give up to two weeks of paid sick time if you get the coronavirus or were told to quarantine by a doctor. JustAnswer is a public forum and questions and responses are not private or confidential or protected by the attorney-client privilege. Those kinds of disclosures often rise to the level of immediate termination, which is what happened, here. While irritating, email from mass marketing lists dont require a response and you probably wouldnt get an answer anyway. Yup! I remind people about once a year that not only can I not look up their medical info on my own, I cant look it up even if they ask me to, and I get in even more trouble if I look up my own medical info. But doing so would likely out the department LW worked for, and probably LW herself. She just needs to learn discretion. Things worked out this time, so I was right! Right. Much as we like to think confidentiality is transferrablethat as long as the people we tell keep things confidential we didnt breach confidentiality to tell themits not. And especially in the field youre in, leaks are a big deal, and ESPECIALLY leaks to a member of the press. A majority of those who work from home would use their own personal digital devices such as laptop, tablet or mobile to perform their daily work tasks and it is also convenient for employees to. Letter writer: If youre still dealing with this emotionally, focus on the facts. OP, its great that you trusted your friend enough to be confident that she wouldnt share what you told her. I do have to wonder if the hospital failed to educate its employees on how freaking serious that kind of breach was, although Id still put the failure on the feet of the violators. And, of course, some agencies dont have a policy and, when contacted can provided whatever info they feel is relevant. This is incredibly condescending. What the saying about eyes, ears, mouths??? I was working on some client confidential information on my client issued laptop and I emailed this info to my personal mailbox as I wanted to continue doing work on my personal laptop; I couldn't take my work laptop away whilst on extended leave overseas. I would absolutely be fired for checking out things for curiosity, I only have access in the first place so I can see whether people are currently clocked in (if you change their access to something while they are actively using it, odd things happen, so I need to check to see if they clocked in that day before I begin). How risky is sending a sensitive work email to the wrong person? No one ever called for a reference. LW, I work under some pretty hefty NDAs (currently, Im working on a project where the security protocols themselves are considered to be non-shareable with anyone who doesnt have a business need for them and hasnt also signed an NDA. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Ive had to fire someone in a one-strike situation for what I genuinely believe was an honest mistake because it was too big a risk to keep that person on staff going forward. (I thought Al Frankens apology to the fellow entertainer was pretty good, actually. Thats a flat out easy to uncover lie. Unfortunately, someone did leak the info so all the employees read about the information in a major business news website AND the local newspaper the night before the event despite the intention for the employees to hear the news firsthand at the event before it was released to the public. Since you touched on it in your follow-up, OP, dont look at this as not getting a second chance. You are its just going to happen at another organization. Clearly yall do not understand handling confidential information. Im assuming the LW plead their case and filled in relevant information. How does this make it any better or worse..? I came here to say this. Contact the recipient Get in touch with the recipient as soon as you notice the mistake and ask them to delete the email without reading or sharing it. Agreed, except for this: a journalist, who by profession is at risk for leaking said confidential information. Im a long time reader posting my first ever comment to tell you that this comment is incredibly condescending, unnecessary, and unhelpful. The anger I hold for my coworker is something I will deal with over time. I think its also something to do with the fact that if you tell a journalist something newsworthy, youre not just talking, youre offering a thing of (potential) value, which is an entirely different action from sharing news with a friend. It doesnt matter if your friend is a journalist or not; thats a total red herring. Or at least, I can. ), You also werent fired for technically breaking a rule. You were fired for actually breaking a rule, and a serious one. You will bounce back! and starting the work of rebuilding reputation. In no time you will have your next job lined up and all this will be just a post earning you rep. You did wrong, fessed up, and got fired anyway. In this case you will get a second chance it will just be with another employer. Yes you can. Also, Ive seen plenty of firings that were absolutely not presented as position elimination. Even if the exact reason wasnt shared employer isnt going to say Oh, Jane took home a spreadsheet full of MNPI they will absolutely share that the ex-employee was fired for cause, not laid off. I dont think it matters now, but the Slack functionality for deleting messages from channels is pretty thorough. I would argue if you acknowledge your error in judgment, it would work more to your benefit, then classifying it as a one-off mistake and overreaction by your company. How to handle a hobby that makes income in US. (I mean, I think its a great program, but Im realistic about things lol.) They may very well have not had the option to give you a second chance, whether you wanted to or not. You would never want someone to find out from the news media that they no longer have a job, for example. Yeah, wouldnt it be possible to prove (or rather disprove) that you leaked to a slack channel full of journalists? Im not cleared for it. OP, I can understand why you would want to talk to someone who was mentoring you about something like this, but when you tell someone you work with that you committed a pretty serious breach of duty and sharing nonpublic information is pretty much always a serious breach!! Copyright 2007 - 2023 Ask A Manager. I just wasn't thinking at the moment I sent the information. It sucks this happened, and Im sorry that this was the way it all went down. Yes! This is just an opportunity to choose words that allow for the most generous possible interpretation (similar to how you say with a friend rather than with a journalist). 2. Rules are there because its so easy to do that thing that feels harmless, and sometimes nobody gets hurt.. Dont fall for it. 27 April 2021. What is the correct way to screw wall and ceiling drywalls? And in fact, NOT getting that second chance with them might mean that you take it more seriously and handle the next relationship in a trustworthy manner. Its so very context and field dependent. A member of the public wants some data, they contact anybody in the agency they can think of, the internal employees bounce it around because somehow they dont know who to send data requests to, and finally it gets to us and we respond. Im not going to tell them about it, unless it actually falls out that I end up being the person who is put in charge of telling them their thing is done. Pay secrecy is a workplace policy that prohibits employees from discussing how much money they make. The answer hinges in part on what constitutes truly private communication, says Christine Walters, an independent consultant with FiveL Company and author of Helping Leaders Limit their Liability by Learning the Law. I dont know whether you meant it this way, but the co-worker is not untrustworthy for reporting this. In those cases I have to be even more careful, because minor details might get linked to the news story and suddenly its not anonymous any more. Its not their call. Yeah, I thought it was from her personal cell too. In most reporting policies i am aware of it would be considered tipping off and get the person reporting in trouble. So seriously, just dont tell anyone at all, fight the temptation, its an icy slope. But your friends profession means you often cant share these types of things with her because of other peoples perceptions about it they dont know your friend, and while she may take off the record seriously, some journalists dont and your coworkers have no way of knowing which type of journalist she is. Wait, what the friend is a *journalist*?. Agreed. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. I, too, have made foolish mistakes that cost me a job. If I was that coworker, Id have to think shed continue to go around blabbing about this, and there is No Way I could just sit on it until *I* got called on the carpet. I question that there are no details about your Monday meeting with HR here. Employees also. Yeah. We can't tell you the best way to answer, since the best way to answer is honestly and you're the only one who can give your honest answer. You arent entitled to a second chance to screw this up. Including their reputation being damaged. If youre excited about a new, increased source of funding, that shows your agency has money to spend. Its going to bite someoneand this time the person it bit was herself, which gives her a good opportunity to work on discipline and discretion. Im also miffed by the fact that the coworker kinda blind sided OP. It was the wrong thing to do, and Im sorry. The info I released did not in fact cause any problems, but I tremble now because it so easily could have, in even slightly different circumstances. I know it isnt the actual incident since the details dont match (no twitter or cake pictures mentioned in OPs case), but I was assuming it was something like the NASA gravitational waves thing. This may have been part of why the manager took the steps she did. The financial firm I worked for had mandatory quarterly compliance meetings with examples of Dont Be This Guy Because He Doesnt Work Here Anymore. Oh, this is all interesting, and I appreciate all the responses. She probably felt she had a duty to disclose it and she may well have. If you dont need to / want to share with the boss share with your closest family/friend, assuming they dont work at the same place or have friends/contacts there. It would have been better if she had told you first that she was going to tell someone I think thats misunderstanding the severity of why what OP did was not ok. Theres any number of non-confidential matters that are embargoed prior to their public announcement. On the weekend, I was sending a personal email to a friend. Confidentiality can stink at an interpersonal level, everyone tends to talk about their work and it can be hard to hide things from people we care about. :) :) :) :) Being a wealthy heiress and a socialite IS a full-time job! Right. Check out this article on that HERE. Well 1.) So. There ARE circumstances in which keep this confidential means you can tell very close, trusted people about it as they did in the letter. Or, maybe they totally overreacted, who knows its impossible to say from here. He was very good about keeping track of his boundaries, and we got very used to finding ways of being politely interested in how his work was going for him without putting pressure on him about the details. Heck, at my agency were cautioned to not use work email on our personal devices (unless were management or its an emergency) because records requests could potentially get our personal devices as well. Because she knows other journalists who do cover your area and one of them just might need a serious break right when she knows this information. If you lie during the interview and the truth later comes out, thats enough to get you fired. The violation was only victimless by accident and confidentiality rules dont hinge on whether or not the leak is known to have caused damage. Agreed. So, are you clear about the severity of your action and the significance of this rule? It should go without saying: a breach of confidentiality could and would wind up in a bar complaint in my jurisdiction. It being Silicon Valley, not only was the phone found, it was immediately identified for what it was. This reminds me of people whose response to hearing no is well, how do we get to a yes? LWs response to this was unacceptable and we cannot have a person on our staff who would do this, was Oh, okay, well, next time I have a similar opportunity here I wont do this.. We will always be privy to confidential information in our roles, its the nature of what we do. So for instance when I got an emergency grant from a water supplier for a woman with no income, there wasnt any risk that telling my wife would identify the woman. Every hospital Ive worked at requires yearly HIPAA compliance training. Wrong is wrong- regardless of scale of the offense, and LW has no one to blame but themselves. Period. And Im pointing out that it wasnt a record at all. I think that is also part of the lesson that OP needs to learn. I agree. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. Ive been in the position of having the relevant information, and even if its hard, you just cant tell your journalist friends unless youre okay with them using it: its what they do, and its not fair to ask them not to. (And yes, the records request would come through the custodian of records, but the point of my second paragraph is that non-public information does not have special protections like confidential information and that the general public has a right to access that information as soon as it is available, and not just when the agency finds it convenient to send out a press release.). And they also need to have an acute understanding that the timing of disclosure makes a HUGE, TREMENDOUS difference. Spek raised a good point- find out what your HR policy is so you know what to be prepared for in an interview. One colleague really didnt like the plan, and he was communicating with people who were organizing opposition to it using his work email. But thats not what happened here. I hope you find something good soon and can put this behind you. Shes never even heard any of the names of our clients, except for a couple she met once at an adjunct social function. You can avoid finding yourself in this position by double-checking the recipient email address (especially when autocomplete is involved), the cc field, and the Bcc field. Oh yes. This was not the coworker telling the boss that OP left 5 minutes early, took a personal call during work hours but OP violating a strict rule even if they trusted the friend. Once you realize that you are likely on the road to employment termination, you need to know that there are options: Responding To The Red Flags. Ive been thinking a lot about apologies in general lately, and one of the most thought-provoking pieces of advice Ive seen is to always err on the side of assuming that whatever you did was a bigger deal than you think. Not generational, just a young person thing. Some of the stuff I handle is really interesting logistically and historically but I just do not have the right to get carried away and share it. Personal info is never OK to share with anyone, or things that could lead to recognizing a person if someone happens to know that person (and you never know who knows who). But when the guilt is deserved, its got a purpose. Good luck! We all developed what we called the [cityname] twitch of looking over our shoulders before we talked about work stuff in a public place. Yes. You committed battery. The person whos emailed may have inadvertently caused a data breach, so it could be important you get in touch and let them know. Privacy Policy and Affiliate Disclosures. (Even if its not an area she covers, she likely knows the person who does, and journalists share tips/info all the time.). Even there, be very sure the person youre talking to has the same access you do. Also, am I even allowed to bring up the fact that someone ratted me out? Resist the temptation to gossip about fellow employees and don't express your disdain for your. In addition to 100% needing to own it when asked about it, I think OP may also benefit from focusing the job search on jobs that dont involve handling sensitive or high profile information. Back in the dinosaur era (early 80s) the directors secretary was the only one tasked with typing up yearly evaluations on high-level staff. The difference is if the potential for and type of jail time you risked. The government takes this stuff very very seriously. Yes, this was a fireable offence, but Im less interested in the nuances of violating confidentiality than in the bigger picture question I have done something where I really screwed up how do I move on? (Someone above mentioned someone bringing a gun to work (Dwight? Really? This was actually a very kind way to get this point across. Hopefully there still something to be said for that! Im now turning my head sideways and re-reading/rethinking. But at that very moment, I was in a personal email back-and-forth with another female coworker. But thats where having friends in the same workplace comes inyou can expend the impulse by gushing to them and then zip your lips once you leave the building. I was talking about this upthread before I saw this discussion. I was often privy to non-public information because I was designing media campaigns around them. Minimizing it will make it harder for future employers to trust OP, whereas frank ownership and an action plan will read as much more responsible and accountable. If I were you, I would examine WHY I decided to tell my journalist friend the info. I can remember almost exactly what I said: It was wrong of me to put that information out. Good luck to you I think Allisons advice for answering questions about this experience is spot on. Second coworker only was put on an improvement plan. 4) The coworker was absolutely right to report the breach in confidentiality. She has to protect her job and reputation as well in the end, she shouldnt have to risk her own job stability due to your choices! Everyone messes up. Maybe you let them know more then they should even without meaning too? I got fired due to sending an email by mistake to the wrong person that had someone else's credit card information in - Answered by a verified Employment Lawyer . This x 1000 to the comment by ENFP in Texas. It might just be that the scanners caught it and notified security. Let me be clear she did not leak it. They must always assume the worst case anyway. the coworker probably was obligated to report it The letter makes it look like you only told one person out of turn, but actually you told two people. The initial complaint filed against Google is currently under seal because the judge has asked the bank to redact the Gmail account from its filings. I supervise a manager who falsified an employee write-up but I dont think she should be fired. I used to work for Marvel Studios. one last post-script: this person wasnt super good at their job, but was a teammate i worked closely with, and doubt they had been put on a PIP prior to this. She can come to value the lesson while seeing it all clearly. Keep rewriting what happened in the most factual, dispassionate way possible. Then the second paragraph said Do not release this information to anyone outside of the office because the press are not to know about these changes until the morning of the event. Its not an obligation to confront. The type of violation you are talking about normally only applies to confidential (shall close) records and not non-public (may close) records. OP came to her, she felt guilty, they apparently talked about this a bit, so why not tell her that this cant be kept secret and she has to come forward to her boss ? People dont talk about it very much but it definitely happens. Also in any governmental job or any job governed by many laws and regulations (such as medicine, law, dentistry, etc) they are laws and compliance regulations in place that must be abided by and every employee had to sign such an agreement usually yearly but at least upon hiring. As easily as one of them knowing OP uses Slack to contact reporters and assuming I told a journalist friend or I told Rain (who they know is a journalist, possibly on that channel), anything but I texted a (journalist) friend meant OP went the usual Slack route. (For the record, I always told people I was interviewing as a source that there was no such thing as off the record with me its not a requirement of our field, theres no law saying we have to follow that request if asked, so if the subject didnt want me to print something, they shouldnt tell me.
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