Read: “Ethical Writing in the Workplace” (pp. 21-29).

Read: “The New Ways Your Boss is Spying on You” by Sarah Krouse, “Can You Really Take That Sick Day? Readers React to Office Sick-Shaming” by Chip Cutter, “‘I Lost It’: The Boss Who Banned Phones, and What Came Next” by John Simons, and “The Gun Issue Comes to the Office” by Rachel Feintzeig.

In a Word document, respond to each of the four articles, proposing at least three (3) possible solutions to each ethical dilemma mentioned in the texts.

Browse the Internet or draw from your personal experiences and then choose an ethical dilemma in a workplace you would like to address. In the same Word Document, describe the ethical dilemma you chose, the two sides of that dilemma, and the reason(s) you chose this specific dilemma (aim for some personal connections).

You have sick days. Can you use them?

The Wall Street Journal’s story on sick-shaming—in which healthy colleagues scold their sick
peers for showing up to work—inspired hundreds of reader emails, comments and posts on
social media.

Plenty of readers divulged their own strategies for giving under-the-weather colleagues the
hint to go home, including one worker whose colleague left a hand-drawn sign on a boss’s office
door that read: “HEY PHLEGM-BOY! GO HOME!”

Many reactions, though, zeroed in on a larger point: Even in workplaces that offer an
abundance of paid sick leave, the spread of the always-on work culture makes it difficult for
many to take time off. Sometimes it’s the boss who pressures staff to show up no matter what.

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MANAGEMENT & CAREERS

Can You Really Take That Sick Day? Readers
React to Office Sick-Shaming
Many argue the presence of hacking, sneezing and sniffling colleagues at work highlights a bigger issue:
It’s often not easy to stay home

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

Jan. 30, 2019 11�00 am ET

By Chip Cutter

https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-sneezed-go-home-11548346062?mod=article_inline

https://www.wsj.com/news/types/management-careers?mod=breadcrumb

Others said they inflict the pressure themselves, convinced that only a crippling stomach bug or
ambulance ride to the emergency room warrants a true sick day.

“Someone has to be on their deathbed” before they realize they can’t come to work, said
Stephen Schofield, a 28-year-old digital associate at a Chicago public-relations firm, of the
mind-set of some of his colleagues.

Cecilia Chang, a managed-care contract specialist near Philadelphia, said that in some previous
jobs, she felt she couldn’t step away from work while sick, despite company policies allowing
sick time. Some bosses still expected her to respond to emails while home or to complete
projects on pre-established timelines. Those who disconnected entirely were seen as inferior,
unable to cope with the pressure of the job, or “less than,” she said.

“For people to call out sick, they’ve got to feel safe and supported,” she said.

Nationally, 71% percent of private-sector workers have some paid sick leave, Labor Department
figures show. Yet, in a recent survey of more than 2,000 adults by Pittsburgh-based market-
research firm CivicScience, 54% reported coming to work even while sick. Many workers who
responded to the Journal’s story said their ability to take leave depended almost entirely on
their relationship with a manager.

Tammy Cooley, a human-resources consultant in Boise, Idaho, said she has worked for bosses
who expected her to answer the phone every time they called, regardless of whether she felt
lousy. She also has experienced bosses who proactively asked: What help do you need so you
can take the day off?

“It starts at the top,” Ms. Cooley said. Managers
who call into conference calls while sick or email
repeatedly on vacation build a culture of “if I’m
not seen, I’m forgotten.”

That puts the onus on colleagues to keep sick
colleagues at bay—one reason some act as sick-
shamers. Clyde Romero, who retired in 2015 as a
captain at American Airlines Group Inc., flying
the A330 on long-haul international routes, said
he had a no-tolerance policy for sick co-pilots in
his cockpit, fearing they could infect others or not
properly perform their in-flight duties.

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When crew members showed up ill before a trip, he would tell them, “No, you’re not coming
with me,” he recalled. There was no shaming, but a question: “What the hell are you doing
here?”

“In the airline industry, when lives are at stake, and you have to be at your best performance,
there’s none of this” political correctness, he said. “If you make a mistake, you’re going to be in
trouble.”

Some companies do go to lengths to remind workers to steer clear of the office while
contagious. In November, Rosana Cerna, vice president of people and business operations at
Great Place to Work, a people analytics and research firm, emailed the company’s roughly 80
U.S. employees with the subject line, “Winter Colds… Not for the Office.” She told sick
colleagues to avoid the temptation of coming into work while ill: “If you ever come into the
office coughing, sneezing or feeling like you want to crawl into bed….Go home!” In case her
words didn’t drive home the message, she also included an emoji with a thermometer in its
mouth.

Ms. Cerna said many employees later thanked her for sending the reminder.

The existence of workplace shaming, though, suggest many managers aren’t doing enough,
readers said. “What’s happening now is you’re seeing this from the bottom-up because it’s not
happening at the top,” said Karyn Detje, a founder of FABRIC, a people and human-resources
consulting practice based in Washington, Conn.

Ms. Detje advises managers to think of their sick staff members like family members. If the
boss’s son or daughter became sick, that manager would likely recommend the child stay home
from work, she reasoned. “That’s exactly how you should be treating your employees,” Ms.
Detje said.

Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com

Copyright © 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Two thousand six hundred seventeen times a day. That is how often the average person taps,
pokes, pinches or swipes their personal phone.

It all adds up to about 2 hours and 25 minutes, according to a study by mobile app research firm
Dscout Inc. And a good chunk of that time comes during work hours.

Jason Brown had had enough of it. Two years ago, the chief executive of Brown, Parker &
DeMarinis Advertising paused for a moment to look across the meeting room as he delivered a
presentation. The majority of those gathered were fiddling with their phones.

“I lost it,” says Mr. Brown.

In his anger, he issued a companywide edict: “Don’t show up at a meeting with me with your
phone. If someone shows up with their phone, it’ll be their last meeting.”

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MANAGEMENT & CAREERS

‘I Lost It’: The Boss Who Banned Phones,
and What Came Next
Employers limit cellphone use to regain attentiveness. Workers use watches and laptops instead.

ILLUSTRATION: OTTO STEININGER

May 16, 2018 7�30 am ET

By John Simons

https://www.wsj.com/news/types/management-careers?mod=breadcrumb

Many managers are conflicted about how—or even whether—to limit smartphone use in the
workplace. Smartphones enable people to get work done remotely, stay on top of rapid business
developments and keep up with clients and colleagues. But the devices are also the leading
productivity killers in the workplace, according to a 2016 survey of more than 2,000 executives
and human-resource managers conducted by CareerBuilder, an HR software and services
company.

There is also some evidence that productivity suffers in the mere presence of smartphones.
When workers in a recent study by the University of Texas and University of California had
their personal phones placed on their desks—untouched—their cognitive performance was
lower than when their devices were in another location, such as in a handbag or the pocket of a
coat hanging near their workspace.

“I firmly believe that multitasking is a myth,” says Bill Hoopes, an IT project manager at L3
Technologies Inc.

Mr. Hoopes put his convictions into practice at group gatherings when he took over a team of
about 25 people at the aerospace defense company three years ago. “Every time someone’s
phone went off, they had to stand for the rest of the meeting,” he says. Before long, he asked the
group to leave their phones at their desks when two or more people got together.

Over time, he says, he has noticed not only an improvement in the quality of conversation and
ideas in meetings, but also that his people seem to show more respect and appreciation for one
another’s work.

Mat Ishbia, CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage, banned technology from meetings about two
years ago and recently asked that his executive team and other managers not check their
phones as they walk to and from meetings.

“Don’t act like we’re too important to say hello,” he says he told them. “Make eye contact with
people.”

Mr. Ishbia is now piloting another solution to phone addiction. A group of about 250 workers
are part of an experiment in which they refrain from all personal phone use at their desks. If
they want to use their devices they must go to a common area designated for phone use and
socializing. Forty-five days into the trial run, workers are checking their phones a lot less, he
said.

Bryan Lee, a product manager at enterprise software company Docker Inc., suspected that his
daily phone use was a problem, so last month he installed an app called Moment on his iPhone

https://quotes.wsj.com/LLL

that tracks the total amount of daily time he spent on his phone. His first measurement revealed
four hours in a day. Since early April, he’s reduced that to roughly an hour.

At work, Mr. Lee persuaded his team of eight to download the app and post their daily phone
hours on a whiteboard. The team member with the lowest time gets bragging rights.

“We’re thinking of having a trophy we can pass around—or maybe just shaming the loser,” he
says.

Handheld devices can be a valuable source of information during office gatherings.  Shane
Wooten, CEO of enterprise video platform company Vidplat LLC, recently surprised a group of
corporate clients with a request that they leave their electronic devices outside. “They didn’t
like it,” he says.

Since January, Mr. Wooten has limited personal devices at meetings with his employees and
faced some resistance. Workers argue their phones are vital for staying in touch with a sick
child or researching information relevant to the meeting.

“I told them we’re not in middle school,” he says. “I’m not collecting phones in a bucket. Just
don’t have it out faceup on the table.”

Google Inc. announced last week that the next version of its operating system for Android
phones will include a feature that is meant to help people who feel tethered to their devices. It
will let users see how much time they spend on their phones, show which apps they use the
most and display how often the phone gets unlocked.

Software may be the key, because not all workplace solutions work. The no-phones-at-meetings
rule at Mr. Brown’s ad agency lasted about two months, because it wasn’t all that effective.

Instead of phones, staffers wore smartwatches to meetings or brought their laptops, which
were just as distracting, he says, adding that workers said they were worried about missing
calls and emails from clients.

Now, he tells his 40 employees not to attend meetings unless they really have to be there and
strongly advises they fully engage.

Mr. Brown missed his phone too and likened the experience to outlawing alcohol during the
Prohibition era: “A theoretical state that almost no one wants to live in, including those making
the rules,” he says.

Write to John Simons at John.Simons@wsj.com

Appeared in the May 17, 2018, print edition as ‘Eye on the Ball, Not on the Phone.’

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Frequent mass shootings are leading many employers to revisit their policies involving guns.

Most offices ban firearms, but the debate about whether to arm teachers, as pushed by
President Donald Trump, is now spilling over into the workplace.

Josh Blake, a county commissioner in Lake County, Fla., about 225 miles northwest of Parkland,
Fla. where 17 people were gunned down Feb. 14, spent his first board meeting after the shooting
proposing changes to the county’s employee handbook.

Mr. Blake decided employers needed to take the lead in protecting workers by allowing more
guns. By unanimous vote, county commissioners repealed rules that barred brass knuckles and
ammunition and added language to allow people with concealed-carry permits to bring their
guns to work. The move covers 776 county employees, from librarians to laborers who fill
potholes.

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MANAGEMENT & CAREERS

The Gun Issue Comes to the Office
Some employers say their workers should be allowed to carry, but most stick with no-tolerance policies

Students attending Stuyvesant High School in New York City were among those across the U.S. who walked out March 14 to
advocate for stricter gun laws. PHOTO: DAVE COLE�THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Updated March 21, 2018 9�47 am ET

By Rachel Feintzeig

https://www.wsj.com/news/types/management-careers?mod=breadcrumb

“I don’t want my life, my family’s lives or my employees’ lives dependent on someone else’s
response time,” said Mr. Blake, who noted that tips to the Federal Bureau of Investigation

about the Parkland suspect had fallen through the cracks.

Some business leaders who want to ban guns entirely on their sites are constrained by so-called
parking-lot laws. The laws, in more than 20 states, stop companies from declaring their parking
lots and garages as gun-free zones, according to Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a
gun- control advocacy group based in San Francisco.

In Ohio, where such a law went into effect last year, many employers worry about the safety
implications, including at plants where there are dangerous chemicals, said Don Boyd, the
director of labor and legal affairs for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. Other firms see the new
requirements as an infringement on their property rights.

“There’s an enormous amount of anxiety,” Larry Barton, a workplace violence consultant who
helps Fortune 500 companies create gun policies, said of the current mood in American
corporations.

In the days after the Parkland shooting, Mr. Barton said he fielded 40 phone calls from
employers in retail and financial services asking for help talking to employees. Workers wanted
to know if their colleagues were armed and if guards could carry guns.

Mr. Barton said he believes workers are safer when organizations have a clear policy banning
firearms. Many firms are reminding workers of their zero-tolerance policies. Others are adding
new screening measures, said Jonathan Wackrow, a managing director with advisory firm
Teneo.

Jasmine Brown, a manager at a regional chain restaurant in Seattle, Wash., spotted a pistol
holstered on the hip of one of her workers earlier this month. She felt uncomfortable and
reminded him he wasn’t supposed to bring the firearm to work.

He took the gun home on a break, but when Ms. Brown’s boss got wind of the incident, he
threatened to fire the employee.

Ms. Brown hopes it doesn’t come to that. “I didn’t feel threatened at all,” she said. Still, she
added, “I wasn’t okay with it.”

Mike Kahoe, the president of Group Management Services Inc., a human- resources outsourcing
company in Richfield, Ohio, prohibits his 300 employees from bringing guns inside. The
company’s office sports a “no weapons allowed” sticker on the front door. An employee was
fired last year after carrying a gun in a company vehicle.

But Mr. Kahoe has tweaked the company’s gun policy to allow an exception: People with
permission of the president can bring a weapon to work. So far, the only person afforded this
special dispensation is him.

Mr. Kahoe brings a handgun to the office when he anticipates situations with clients or
employees could get violent. For instance, when firing a burly sales rep who slammed a chair
down during the uncomfortable conversation, his gun was in a nearby drawer.

“It made me feel a little better,” he said.

Some company policies go ignored. Sharp Communication Inc., a security firm that sells radios
and body armor, bars employees from bringing guns into its three Alabama locations. Even so,
an employee brought his gun to work to sell to a colleague and it accidentally fired, injuring
both workers.

Sharp fired the two employees and now makes workers sign its no-weapons policy. Rex
Reynolds, Sharp’s president and a former law-enforcement officer, keeps his own handgun in a
lockbox in the middle console of his car.

If there was ever a threat of violence at the office, “I would certainly return to my car and
retrieve my weapon,” he said.

—John Simons contributed to this article.

Write to Rachel Feintzeig at rachel.feintzeig@wsj.com

Copyright © 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Your employer may know a lot more about you than you think.

The tone of your voice in a meeting. How often you’re away from your desk. How quickly you
respond to emails. Where you roam in the office. What’s on your computer screen.

To be an employee of a large company in the U.S. now often means becoming a workforce data
generator—from the first email sent from bed in the morning to the Wi-Fi hotspot used during
lunch to the new business contact added before going home. Employers are parsing those
interactions to learn who is influential, which teams are most productive and who is a flight
risk.

Companies, which have wide legal latitude in the U.S. to monitor workers, don’t always tell
them what they are tracking. When executives at McKesson Corp. wanted to know why some of
its teams had higher turnover the pharmaceutical wholesaler last year worked with a people
analytics startup to examine data on the sender, recipient and timing of over 130 million emails
—not the content of the messages—from more than 20,000 U.S. employees to see what dots it
could connect about relationships.

The analytics firm, TrustSphere, found that teams with lower turnover typically had a diverse
mix of internal connections up and down the chain of command inside the company and with
external contacts, while teams with higher turnover had stronger relationships outside the
company and weaker relationships with colleagues at their level or lower inside the firm.
McKesson says it only looked at groups of workers, not individual employees out of respect for
worker privacy and opted not to disclose the analysis to employees at the time because it did
not look at email content.

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MANAGEMENT & CAREERS

The New Ways Your Boss Is Spying on You
It’s not just email. Employers are mining the data their workers generate to �igure out what they’re
up to, and with whom. There’s almost nothing you can do about it.

July 19, 2019 5�30 am ET

By Sarah Krouse

https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-hours-of-work-a-day-youre-not-fooling-anyone-11563528611?mod=article_inline

https://www.wsj.com/news/types/management-careers?mod=bigtop-breadcrumb

https://www.wsj.com/watchlist?mod=wsjeng_watchlist_marketvola_oct

“The beauty of what we’re getting out of this is information to make our teams function better,”
says R.J. Milnor, vice president, workforce planning and analytics at McKesson.

McKesson has not yet
determined what
changes it will make
as a result of the
findings, but has
considered adopting

a more open office plan to encourage more discussion between employees. It is also exploring
ways to predict which teams are at risk of losing members based on their relationship patterns.

It’s not just emails that are being tallied and analyzed. Companies are increasingly sifting
through texts, Slack chats and, in some cases, recorded and transcribed phone calls on mobile
devices.

Microsoft Corp. tallies data on the frequency of chats, emails and meetings between its staff
and clients using its own Office 365 services to measure employee productivity, management
efficacy and work-life balance.

Tracking the email, chats and calendar appointments can paint a picture of how employees
spend an average of 20 hours of their work time each week, says Natalie McCollough, a general
manager at Microsoft who focuses on workplace analytics. The company only allows managers
to look at groups of five or more workers.

Earlier this year, Microsoft sales team members received personalized dashboards that show
how they spend their time, insights that managers cannot see. The portal offers suggestions on
how to build out their networks of contacts and spend more time with customers rather than in
internal meetings.

Microsoft also sells that type of workplace analytics software to other companies, such as
Macy’s Inc., which crunched data on staff work-life balance by measuring how many hours
employees spend sending emails and logged in outside of business hours. Mortgage giant
Freddie Mac used Microsoft’s analysis to gauge how much time workers spent in meetings and
try to determine whether some of those gatherings were redundant.

Advocates of using surveillance technology in the workplace say the insights allow companies
to better allocate resources, spot problem employees earlier and suss out high performers.
Critics warn that the proliferating tools may not be nuanced enough to result in fair, equitable
judgments.

“There’s what’s legally right and what you need to do to maintain trusting relationships with
your employees, and they are not always the same thing,” says Stacia Garr, co-founder of

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workforce research and advisory firm RedThread Research, which researches and advises
companies on human resource-related issues.

Diana Hubbard, a 41-year-old user-experience designer and researcher in Fort Worth, Tex.,
does not communicate about her private life on work devices at all—not even to make a dinner
reservation online. She keeps a personal smartphone and two personal laptops—one dedicated
to gaming—in addition to her work-issued phone and computer. When she travels for work, Ms.
Hubbard sometimes carries two phones and two laptops and avoids connecting her personal
phone to any corporate Wi-Fi unless she sets up a virtual private network connection.

“I’m not all tinfoil hat or anything,” she says, noting that she tries to avoid sharing personal
data online altogether. “Data is so valuable that I don’t like to give it away for free, no matter
who is trying to take it or access it. That’s really what it comes down to. This is mine. I own it.”

Diana Hubbard, working from her home of�ice in Texas, says she does not communicate about her private life on work devices at
all. PHOTO: JONATHAN ZIZZO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

https://www.wsj.com/watchlist?mod=wsjeng_watchlist_marketvola_oct

For years companies have made workers sign technology agreements detailing how any digital
transmission that flows across a work-issued phone or computer is company property. U.S.
employers are legally entitled to access any communications or intellectual property created in
the workplace or on devices they pay for that employees use for work, employment lawyers say.

Now companies are getting smarter at
analyzing the trove of worker data in
their possession. One of the newest
frontiers is dissecting phone calls and
conference room conversations. In
some cases, tonal analysis can help
diagnose culture issues on a team,
showing who dominates
conversations, who demurs and who
resists efforts to engage in emotional
discussions.

Life Time Inc., which operates a chain
of fitness facilities, uses language

processing provided by a two-year-old company called Ambit Analytics to evaluate how newly
hired club managers are able to solve problems in small groups. The training exercise surfaces
information on how much a person talked over others and rates their speech and volume.

Five to eight participants and a group facilitator download an app on their phones and press a
button to begin the recording. They are typically given a hypothetical problem to solve. Life
Time then counsels its new hires about what skills to work on, whether becoming a better
listener or speaking up more often, says David Pettrone Swalve, vice president of education at

Diana Hubbard keeps a personal smartphone and two personal laptops in addition to her work-issued phone and computer as a
way of maintaining privacy. PHOTO: JONATHAN ZIZZO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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Life Time. Some people, he says, find it easier to hear feedback based on data rather than
another person, which can seem subjective.

“Black Mirror is upon us,” Mr. Swalve says, referring to the popular futuristic Netflix show.

Using emails to decipher customer
and internal relationship patterns
helped Ramco Systems, a software
maker based in Chennai, India,
reduce the time it took to train
new sales team staffers across its
offices, which range from
Princeton, N.J., to Singapore.
When a sales executive left the

company, for instance, Ramco could identify that person’s 50 strongest client relationships and
quickly pass along the information to their replacement. Doing so meant it took weeks instead
of up to five months to get new hires on the team up to speed, the company says.

Ramco used TrustSphere to help with its analysis of digital interactions. TrustSphere Chief
Executive Manish Goel says his firm doesn’t look at the content of emails or chats but it can still
highlight an organization’s internal influencers by identifying those whose messages get quick
responses and who have strong, ongoing relationships with peers throughout the company. Mr.
Goel says it’s possible to glean useful clues from data handled in ethical, transparent ways
while respecting worker privacy.

Some executives and researchers warn that artificial intelligence in the workplace and natural
language processing technology is still evolving and the data employers can capture paints only
a partial picture of a worker’s day or relationships. While it’s easy to identify joy or anger,
detecting more nuanced emotions is difficult.

Demand for workplace analytics have spawned dozens of other startup companies such as
Bunch.ai, which analyses the tone of Slack channels to gauge team chemistry and morale. It
declined to name its customers. More than 2,000 employers across industries including health
care, energy, legal, automotive and government now use Aventura, Fla.-based Teramind’s
monitoring technology, says Eli Sutton, vice president of global operations. Many have a
particular focus on keeping documents and intellectual property from finding their way to
competitors.

Teramind deploys a suite of software that can take a live look at employees’ screens, capture
real-time keystrokes, record video of their activities and break down how they spend their time.
Some employers opt to set up alert systems so that if a worker opens certain documents and
tries to print them, software will attempt to prevent such an action and notify an administrator.

READ MORE

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Teramind can also classify employees’ hours as productive or unproductive, based on activities
like scrolling through Facebook.

The technology shows companies how work actually gets accomplished, Mr. Sutton says, and
most clients notify workers that they may be monitored. A number of firms also are using
Teramind to keep tabs on their remote workers. Teramind declined to name its customers.

Others are testing the boundaries of how much privacy workers will relinquish. Ben Waber,
a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of a Boston

startup named Humanyze, led a group of MIT researchers that tested microphone-equipped
badges to record the tone of worker voices and sensed changes in their stress levels. The
technology was tested by a Fortune 500 bank in the U.S. and several companies in Japan, where

Companies turn to TrustSphere to help with their analysis of digital interactions. TrustSphere Chief Executive Manish Goel says
his company doesn’t look at the content of emails or chats but it can identify which employees have strong relationships with
peers. PHOTO: DAVID VINTINER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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workplace stress-induced suicide is a problem. The badges proved effective, though hard to
scale, Mr. Waber says.

“Your employer controls your livelihood and if they say ‘give me this data’, it’s very hard to say
no,” Mr. Waber says.

During the research project, employees fitted with the recording badges signed up for the
experiment and knew they were being monitored.

Humanyze shifted its focus to Bluetooth badges that can track a worker’s movements
throughout the office and found success. It pairs that data with information on the frequency of
their emails to help companies measure staff collaboration and productivity. Humanyze would
not disclose the identity of its customers. Mr. Waber says the U.S. still needs clearer regulation
of employee monitoring and data collection.

Executives at communications provider 8×8 Inc. say they can identify when staff start working
on their employer-subsidized mobile devices at the beginning of the day, when they stop for
lunch and when they send the last chat or email in the evening. Its customers include Condé
Nast, which uses it to analyze how many calls are made on mobile phones versus desktop
phones and the Alzheimer’s Association, which uses it to study the tone of calls from patients
and their caretakers.

Workplace communications services from 8×8 help employers measure performance, and
maintain intellectual property when employees leave because communications like phone calls
can be transcribed, its executives say.

“How do you know that they are not using bad language? That they didn’t say something
stupid,” says Dejan Deklich, chief product officer at 8×8.

Laszlo Bock, who helped found the concept of “people analytics” during his tenure at Alphabet
Inc. ’s Google, warns that employers are in danger of making their workers uncomfortable by
monitoring their every move and message. He is now CEO of an employee survey company
called Humu.

“You don’t have to hook every employee up to an MRI to find out how to make them work
better,” he says.

—Chip Cutter contributed to this article

Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com

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HOW TO KEEP YOUR PRIVATE LIFE MOSTLY PRIVATE

What should you do if you want to keep your personal data private in the workplace? Here are
some tips from privacy experts.

Maintain separate devices: Only use your employer-issued phone and laptop for work and keep
a separate phone and computer for personal use.

Avoid linking your personal devices to corporate Wi-Fi networks: “Companies routinely log
network activity to protect business interests, and most policies make clear there is no
expectation of privacy of company equipment,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the
Washington, D.C.-based nonpro�it Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Be careful what you share on your resume: Privacy consultant Michael Bazzell tells clients to
anticipate that every piece of personal information shared during the recruitment process could
become public through a data breach. He recommends using a Google Voice or internet-based
calling phone number rather than your cellphone number, and a commercial mail receiving
address like a UPS store.

Use a USB data-blocker: These devices look like thumb drives and sit between a smartphone
and a charging cord or dock. They protect smartphone data from being transferred to public
charging stations, rental cars or company-owned computers.

Avoid leaking information: Don’t publish information about your personal life on public social
media accounts like Facebook and Twitter pro�iles, which can be mined for potentially
damaging information by your employer or a company where you have applied for a job.

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