Spoiler, even if you're the last guy, chances are there's lawyers doing the same thing to you. * Be the guy paying other people who accepts liability for their work and has the legal right to their business communications * Get paid by someone who accepts the liability of your work and has the legal right to all of your business communications The way I see it, you have three options: It's a liability problem for a company if employees are circumventing documentation and potentially covering up crimes. If you manage to conceal your communications, not only could you be violating laws (depending on your industry and relevant regulations) but you're likely violating corporate policy and in need of corrective actions. You can't have a private conversation at work. Old boys club keeps it 'verbal only', but someone blows the whistle and testifies regarding the conversation. With the recent Facebook news, I should have thought that sort of concern was obvious.īefore tech, witness testimony was the same thing. I want them to be careful how they communicate in writing, not because they should be worried about me, but because they should be worried about Slack getting hacked/leaked. Also, to clarify, I'm in the US and our employees are well aware that communications on company-operated platforms should not be considered private. I really don't want everything that's more than I care to see. I don't go into private communications unless I have to, and I'd rather have the option to review specific DMs / private channels than dump everything. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons.Įdit: I'll say this is still not an ideal solution. Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening.

A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. But there are times when I have no choice. As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY.ĭon't get me wrong-it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't.

Does slack show what you are doing