Protecting Your Job Tomorrow By Protecting Your Data Today

It’s time. Start protecting your job tomorrow by protecting your data today. The workplace of tomorrow demands it. It’s not just about the skills one carries with him. It’s also about the data he carries with him too. Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) will make it so.

A Bad Data Print Won’t Hurt Until Needed

Let’s start simply. Take credit scores. Every dollar we earn, borrow, spend and save every day counts. The tracking of this goes on whether we’re aware of it or not. It doesn’t even affect us until that day arrives when we need a good credit score. We can’t do much about it then.

The same is true with data. Do we need a good data print now? No. Will we need it at some point? Yes, our jobs will even depend on it. Almost all companies do background checks on employees. Many do credit checks too.

A background check is more than references and criminal history. Tomorrow’s will include data prints. It’s already quite easy for employer’s to get IP addresses.

Data brokers already can connect online and non-online activity. Facebook, Google and others help them. It’s how they make money. Marketers use this data now.

Artificial intelligence and big data will make it necessary to manage your digital fingerprint when protecting your job.

Big Data And Artificial Intelligence As Score Keepers

Why don’t employers use it now too? Mainly, they don’t see how it can be useful. Big D and AI will change that. If this data can red flag consumers as high risk for fraud, why can’t it flag applicants a high work risks?

For instance, hiQ Labs scores employees’ turnover risk from LinkedIn data. Acxiom scores consumers. Tinder scores desirability. Big D and AI make this scoring work. How long until someone scores workers? China does it. They score citizens too.

It won’t just be public data either. Big D and AI will collect and analyze huge amounts of internal workplace data too. Employees have few rights to privacy at work.

Protecting Your Job Tomorrow

I know, “I’ve got nothing to hide, so why worry?” That’s not the problem. Who interprets our data is. Two could see different things. It won’t even be a who at first. It’s a what, Big D and AI will do the scoring first.

Yes, protecting your job tomorrow means protecting your data today. Begin shaping it today. If not, when you need it, it’ll let you down like a bad credit score does. The only difference is that you might not know it did.