Can You Maintain Confidentiality With Remote Employees?

While there are many advantages to businesses allowing their employees to work from home, the retention of sensitive company information needs a great deal of consideration. If your organization has remote employees, consider these points to ensure that your firm is maintaining confidentiality properly.

1. Protecting Paper Documents

If your remote employees' work duties require them to take sensitive documents home, set policies on how the confidential information should be handled and protected. Instruct workers to keep the information locked up in a secure location when it's not in use, and discuss the proper protocol for disposing of confidential documents, such as shredding.

2. Obtaining Necessary Permissions

Set boundaries on what work an employee can and cannot take from the office. Lay out guidelines on which documents require special permission from a supervisor before a remote employee can take it home, and have managers assess whether a true need exists. Create a log to track who took what information and when. Set forth instructions on how soon an employee should return the documents.

3. Safeguarding Computer Data

If your employees work on computers, stress the importance of cyber security. Ensure your remote employees utilize a firewall to protect themselves and the company from hackers. Instruct your employees on how to create complicated passwords that are difficult for others to guess, and require employees to change passwords regularly.

4. Maintaining Multiple Devices

Many remote employees juggle a variety of devices, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets, to complete their daily duties and stay in contact with the office. Stress the importance of using these devices for work purposes only, ensure the devices are password-protected and have employees keep them in secure locations at all times.

5. Working in Public

Set ground rules for remote employees who work outside the office but also want to work outside their homes. Inform employees about specific information or records they should not access from public places, such as at a café or on the train. If employees plan to work on their laptops in close proximity to others, such as at the airport, require them to use privacy screens.

6. Reacting to Security Breaches

Whether a remote employee suspects someone hacked his computer, loses his work-issued smartphone or has his briefcase full of client invoices stolen, make sure he knows how to deal with the situation. Train employees on whom to alert in the event of a security breach, and stress the importance of reporting the issue immediately.

Maintaining confidentiality should be a top priority for any organization, and it becomes more of an issue for firms that hire remote employees. In an age where security breaches and leaked information are common place, companies must do all they can to protect their clients, employees, partners and reputation. Proper policies and training can stress the importance of protecting confidential records.

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