Linked: As workspace usage of Slack and Microsoft Teams soars, lawyers see an uptick in harassment claims
I guess I could see this happening. Teams or Slack chats are real-time, people feeling angry might be tempted to voice their unfiltered opinions on them, much like we see on Twitter, etc.
“If workers don’t feel they have a voice on serious issues, resentment can build, turning channels ugly. At the end of the day, this is a leadership problem. This is a new, transparent world, and you can see that Slack and Twitter have the same problem. They allow you to broadcast the thoughts in your head in close to real-time. There’s a reason why we were equipped with the survival skill of filtering. When we allow technology to bypass that, bad things happen. Social media is simply a force-multiplier for stupidity.”
There is, of course, a huge difference between using a tool like Twitter, where you control the account personally, and Teams, where your organization controls the account. Either one can be a danger to your career, but on Twitter, you can delete the tweet, and unless some grabbed a screenshot, it’s gone. (Which is why I wouldn’t recommend putting your unfiltered complaints about your employer, coworkers or industry peers out there to start with.)
On MS Teams though? I’ve done a lot of work lately on the discover-ability of Teams, and the metadata held within those chats. Trust me, don’t say anything on a workplace messaging system that you don’t want to have documented for eternity. Because there’s no way for you to know, even if you delete it, how long it’s really going to be there.
Think about it, if your workplace is that toxic, and management that untrustworthy, even if they ask for feedback, do you want to hand them that kind of smoking gun to use whenever they feel like it down the road?
And, it should go without saying, but I’ll say it. Don’t harass your coworkers in chat tools or anywhere else!
Treat all of these the same way we’ve learned to treat email. If you don’t want it read in court one day, don’t type it.
As workspace usage of Slack and Microsoft Teams soars, lawyers see an uptick in harassment claims
