She had interviewed and met both remotely and in person, this guy was merely an HR drone confirming her documentation. I was a little bent when she told me he had asked her to remove her blur filter “to have a look at her working environment, make sure it’s not cluttered” (something along those lines). No one else at this company requested such. Was he way out of line?
I should note, this is my PC in our living room and not where she will be working from. And this guy wants a look around our home?! Told my wife to bring this up once she’s settled in, ask HR if this is policy. She started today!
She thinks it’s a racism thing. I’m not so sure, but I don’t have any other explanation.
Hmm, so, policy in our office is a clean desk. Before you jump to conclusions, it’s because our secured area and office occasionally has people come through that should absolutely not see what information we have on our desks. This requirement is a compliance issue for our continued contracts and certifications.
Our work from home policy hasn’t addressed this issue, but it sounds like it’s a clear gap. Your neighbour coming around for a cup of tea absolutely should not be able to see any work related information.
My assumption is that someone has considered this kind of aspect and had a check to confirm that they’ve done diligence by asking you to reveal your working space. A space the companies sensitive information would be visible. Actually you too should maybe not be looking at your wife’s screen nor materials on her work desk. Depending on the situation.
Either way, policy comes first so perhaps her employment agreement or employee handbook would reveal more.
Bravo! A well stated and sane explanation. She will be working in the financial sector, so that explains much. Doesn’t quite fit her situation, but yeah, I get it.
How can one not have a clean desk when working remotely? Do people just print random documents for no good reason when you can just have it on the screen?
I don’t even think my work would even let me plug in a printer to my MacBook, they disabled all the USB drivers except mouse and keyboard to prevent usage of flash drives and other unauthorized peripherals.
They made damn sure the only thing displaying sensitive information is the computer screen, which automatically locks after 5 minutes and cannot be configured by the user. I’d really have to willingly show company data for this to be a problem.
That really shouldn’t matter at all for remote workers as everything should be self contained in the company provided computer, with encryption enabled, strong password policy, 2FA, the whole thing.
We have a clean desk policy at my workplace too, we also don’t take classified documents home