Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep53: Confidentiality at work. Does it matter?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of my Gotta Ping Careers podcast. So in today's podcast, I want to talk about confidentiality and if this is something that we should even care about nowadays

Starting point is 00:00:43 because on social media i'm seeing a trend of people basically talking about a lot of items on their personal life they tend to share a lot about their company as well in terms of the nature of their job what they are actually doing for some posts that i've seen is quite detailed as well so today I really want to talk about does it matter and basically should you be should you be even doing it right does is there a line around confidentiality or it's pretty much open and you can say whatever you want because it's a free platform. So my perspective is this. I think at the end of the day, if you are a corporate professional, you need to remember the contract that you have signed to join the company. So what I mean by contract is pretty much the job offer and the

Starting point is 00:01:47 employment contract that you have signed and agreed to the terms and conditions that you would, you know, behave in a certain way and you will also, you also agree to the various policies that the company has put in place. So there's of course some questions around, oh, you know, what is ethical and is it fair that companies tell us what we should or shouldn't do? Well, this consideration, you shouldn't be thinking about it, right, after you've joined the company. You should be really asking yourself, even before joining the company have you really considered the culture and if that is the kind of company that maybe would align with your other ambitions so when i mean other ambitions it could be more entrepreneurial ambitions some people they want to transition

Starting point is 00:02:41 into business or entrepreneurship at some point and that also defines the things that they do on social media or for some other people they are very enthusiastic about establishing themselves as a bit of an influencer so of course depending on what your goals are that would also affect what you say and do and to what extent that you want to move out of that comfort zone beyond the standard corporate professional but i say that all in all don't forget what is your main ambition so if your main ambition is still pursuing a career pursuing a corporate career make sure that you are not distracted by a lot of the noise that you see on different social media platforms be it facebook linkedin instagram tiktok and all the other social media platforms so recently on linkedin i ran a poll on whether is it acceptable to share your offer letter online and surprisingly and i guess

Starting point is 00:03:50 maybe not as surprising to a lot of people but surprising to me there were about 80 percent of people voted that you should not share your offer letter online because it's a breach of confidentiality and it's just inappropriate and of course there are much better ways to celebrate a win celebrate that you have gotten a new job so i definitely agree with this perspective the reason why i said that i was surprised is because on linkedin i do see a lot of people who endlessly share their job offer letter. And there's just a lot of private and confidential information in there, including sometimes name, IC number, address, the information about the company's systems, and even the various hiring managers as well so just wanted to remind everybody that

Starting point is 00:04:47 sometimes the noise that you see meaning different people who are sharing this kind of posts and content out there it may not always represent the majority and it may not always represent the perspective of a proper corporate leader if that is that is your goal in terms of like career growth right so just make sure that you are taking advice from people who have the kind of success that you are looking for and not get too distracted by a lot of things that is happening on social media nowadays so personally for me if you ask me whether confidentiality does it matter or not to me very very important it really matters because it is down to your reputation and your integrity and basically how much you can be trusted as a loyal

Starting point is 00:05:40 team member ready to ready to really invest, energy, and really prove your, I guess, loyalty, for lack of a better word, to your team, to your department, to your company, to the organization that you are currently working in. So even though we are seeing a lot of noise and you see a lot of people sharing a lot of different kind of posts, content and stories from the more storytelling standpoint. But the question that you should ask yourself is whether if a hiring manager, if a corporate leader, if a senior manager or somewhere of a company that maybe you're interviewing at picks up a piece of content that you have posted maybe it's your offer letter from a previous job or something else or maybe

Starting point is 00:06:32 i've even seen people sharing like you know project documents and i'm not sure how appropriate it is to share because at the end of the day everything that you are you have done as part of your role in that company that is actually the company's intellectual property for those of you who may not realize it actually that is part of the company's intellectual property so if you're seeing people sharing this kind of thing out there and if you want really want to ask yourself you know if this is appropriate or not just imagine yourself going to an interview in the future and all of these posts all of these information sharings that you thought were

Starting point is 00:07:10 really cool at that time if those were brought out to you for an explanation would you be comfortable sharing that or the thought of that actually is creating a lot of stress and anxiety for you right now because remember that a lot of things that we do there are repercussions there are things that um yeah there is that basically what i'm trying to say is that there is an impact to the actions that we take today and how it impacts our career right maybe you know a couple of months maybe even years down the road because every single thing that you put online it is discoverable it is searchable right whether you like it or not so yes to a certain extent right we can say that oh you know it's a freedom of choice freedom of speech i can say want. Yes, if you have not signed the

Starting point is 00:08:05 the job offer and if you have not signed the employment contract, if you are a freelancer, I mean, like a full time freelancer or you are your own boss, of course, right, then you make your own rules, whatever, whatever floats your boat, right, just do it. But if you are a corporate professional, you have signed the job offer, you have signed the employment contract just make sure that you remember that you are a company employee first right you represent your team your department your company your organization and every single piece of document that you handle

Starting point is 00:08:38 as part of being in that role doing working hours outside of working hours, the moment that you are employed, that means that you have an obligation to make sure that these information, documents, reports, or whatever materials you want to call it, those do fit the confidentiality bill. So just take note. This is something that I think a lot of times people tend to forget

Starting point is 00:09:05 because there is this very popular mindset or rather, yeah, I guess it is a popular habit of, I guess, influencers, marketers, encouraging people to just, you know, share your successes, you know, let everybody celebrate with you. Yes, I think there is a there is a time and place for that. But I think nowadays it's just a little bit too much. And I think a lot of people are looking for that short term celebration, but they may have forgotten that it does also impact their professional reputation down the road. So so before we end today's podcast, I just want to ask,

Starting point is 00:09:47 I want to maybe leave a question to all of you. And the question is this, if some of the things that you have shared today, if that gets pulled out a couple of years down the road, do you think that will help your professional reputation or it will damage your professional reputation? So the question is very simple. If some of the things that you have said and shared online till today, if it's pulled out a couple of years down the road do you think it will help your professional reputation or do you think it will make it worse

Starting point is 00:10:30 right really think about it i leave you with this question and like i said a lot of things that we say and do today there is an impact be it positive or negative on our career down the road so with that i'll see you in the next episode cheers

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep53: Confidentiality at work. Does it matter?

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