While many of the Australian workforce is working from home as they play their part in preventing the spread of the Coronavirus or COVID-19, a new set of challenges are starting to come to light, which typically wouldn’t have existed outside of a government enforcement isolation measure.
For the typical office-based employee, working from home or working from elsewhere has become more and more common. Many employers praise themselves for flexibility and allowing employees to work from home when they need to, or on a more regular basis.
The COVID-19 outbreak however means that in some households, there are multiple people working from home at the same time. This of course has the ability to breach data privacy policies and allow people external to the business, to overhear confidential conversations and gain access to private information and documentation.
top 3 tips on how to work from home privately:
protect your data.
You risk exposing company information when you leave the safety and security of your dedicated work and work remotely. If you live independently, this isn’t so much of a problem. However, it’s always advisable to still adhere to best practice privacy measures to be safe.
Outside of Coronavirus isolation, some individuals that work from home may break up the day by heading to the local library or coffee shop for a change of environment. In these cases, devices must be protected against loss and theft, for example.
to ensure you’re safe, follow the below instructions:
encryption
- Ensure your employer sets you up with adequate safety measures to allow you to log on privately. This ensures that even if the device falls into the wrong hands, the company’s data is not accessible.
log out
- Lock it when your machine isn’t by your side at home and in public places. You never know what could happen. A child might accidentally send an email or change a setting you could never find out about. It’s also about limiting the opportunity for someone to access the machine while your back is turned in the local coffee shop or library.
create a strong password
- Not so strong that you’ll never remember it, but try and make it unique to yourself.
- Try not to stick it on a post-it under your mouse mat or write it in the front page of your notebook.
don’t tempt thieves
- Always put your device away at night, after work. If you’re on the road, lock it in the boot of your car.
- Keep it safe, and you won’t have to confront your manager or IT department about why they have to fork out a new laptop because you left it on display.
avoid work conversations.
to ensure you’re safe, follow the below instructions:
encryption
- Ensure your employer sets you up with adequate safety measures to allow you to log on privately. This ensures that even if the device falls into the wrong hands, the company’s data is not accessible.
log out
- Lock it when your machine isn’t by your side at home and in public places. You never know what could happen. A child might accidentally send an email or change a setting you could never find out about. It’s also about limiting the opportunity for someone to access the machine while your back is turned in the local coffee shop or library.
create a strong password
- Not so strong that you’ll never remember it, but try and make it unique to yourself.
- Try not to stick it on a post-it under your mouse mat or write it in the front page of your notebook.
don’t tempt thieves
- Always put your device away at night, after work. If you’re on the road, lock it in the boot of your car.
- Keep it safe, and you won’t have to confront your manager or IT department about why they have to fork out a new laptop because you left it on display.
avoid work conversations.
When you’re at work, conversations, unsurprisingly, are mostly about work. However, in a relaxed home environment, it sometimes can feel natural to chat about work with loved ones or housemates.
In a rare but possible situation where two people in a home who are both working from home while quarantined work for competitors, it can get a bit messy.
Although it’s not likely that one person could take insight and private information for the other and pass it to others in their business intentionally, it does have the ability to come out in an informal chat. This then can lead to others passing competitor confidential information into the wrong hands.
To be safe, try and stick to neutral subjects and limit the work chat to email and instant messenger.
If you need any extra advice about how to best communicate with others when working from home, see here.
have confidential conversations in a separate room.
When you’re in the office, confidential conversations happen all around you. Whether it’s one colleague talking to another, someone taking a phone call from their desk, or a team update where it’s strictly business chat, it’s going on all the time.
When working from home, the conversations you wouldn’t have outside of the office mustn’t be happening outside of the office.
HR managers, for example, are responsible for handling confidential matters as part of their day job, accountants will be dealing with sensitive business numbers, and health workers may have to discuss detailed patient cases from their homes.
If you have a call or meeting coming up where you know business confidential matters will be discussed, try and find some space somewhere else in your home, away from others. If that isn’t possible, plug in your earphones and try to limit repeating what others are saying unless vital.
