Cambridge Analytica and lessons for firms

Cambridge Analytica (CA) has been in the news recently with allegations being made against it for misuse of data. The company came into prominence during the election campaign of Donald Trump as well as during the Brexit vote. It is said to have played a key role in swaying the voters for both the US elections as well as the Brexit vote. Their modus operandi was to use data from Facebook to profile individuals. CA claimed that with just 90 odd posts, it could predict with a fairly high degree of accuracy the voting preferences for individuals.

While they have been in the news both for misuse of data as well as other questionable practices, including honey-trapping opposition members, it is the misuse of data bit that actually struck a chord with me. Given the immense impact that digitisation has had and will continue to have in our lives as shown by the continuing disquiet and discomfort in our own country with regards to our Aadhar card data being made available to all and sundry, it behoves us all to tread carefully when it comes to data that is in our control.

For organisations, this translates into any and all data regarding their employees. With the proliferation of cloud-based service providers for everything from payroll to performance management, organisations are naturally cautious about the safety and security of data. SaaS solution providers are cognizant of this fact and have taken efforts to ensure data safety and privacy. A much bigger issue, though for employees is in how organisations are also tapping into social media networks to inform them about hiring options. Software platforms exist that basically trawl through employee social media profiles to build models for hiring fit, hiring no-shows and candidate-fit within organisations post hiring. Software providers are also starting to leverage social media data to analyse and predict attrition within organisations.

While employees are fine with organisations using LinkedIn data to make decisions regarding hiring or attrition, there is an obvious distaste for organisations making use of Facebook or Twitter profiles. They view it as an invasion of privacy and even unethical. While privacy laws are quite strict in the US where employers are strictly prohibited from profiling candidates based on gender, race or religion, in India such profiling is very common.

There is an ongoing fight between civil society and the lawmakers over bringing in stricter individual privacy laws. If and when that happens, organisations which have turned a blind eye towards upholding ethical standards, hiding behind the fig-leaf of the absence of explicit laws, preventing such actions will need to ensure that they comply with these rules.

Data privacy is fast becoming an important issue in our lives and the sooner organisations figure out how to walk that thin line between using data for employee decision-making and avoiding unethical use of data, the better.

The writer is founder and CEO of HR analytics start-up nFactorial Analytical Sciences