Luke P. Wright, partner in the Labor and Employment practice, and F. Paul Greene, CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM, FIP, partner and chair of our Privacy and Data Security team, were recently interviewed by the Rochester Business Journal. The article, “Data security is next frontier as more employers embrace remote work,” discusses the prevalence of remote work since the pandemic and what employers should to be doing to address productivity and data privacy concerns.
The article provided details of a study by Stanford researchers of 16,000 at-home workers over nine months that showed working from home increased productivity by 13% when compared to company data from previous years. Luke noted that his skepticism of work from home has changed. “One of the fears about at-home work pre-pandemic was that most employees would not be productive,” he said. “This largely turned out to be wrong and the skepticism of work from home has been pushed back broadly. I was one of the people who was skeptical, but my view has changed.”
Paul stated that at the start of the remote work trend employers were concerned with productivity, now they should turn their attention to data protection. He recommends that all companies ensure their work-from-home policies address data protection and are harmonized with their other data protection policies. “When work from home increased during the pandemic many companies’ policies around remote work looked more at logistical and productivity issues, … now it’s critical that companies re-visit their work-from-home policies to make sure the data protection piece is not only included but robust.”
To view the article on Rochester Business Journal’s website, click here.