These are dangerous times for companies. Not only is the economy in the pits, but some employees are ‘getting even’ when they’re laid off or terminated.

“The fired technology director for LifeGift Organ Donation Center pleaded guilty in Houston federal court on Thursday to illegally accessing her employer’s computer and deleting files including organ donation database records.

After being terminated, Danielle Duann, 51, repeatedly gained access to the LifeGift network and intentionally caused damage that cost the nonprofit Texas organ procurement group more than $94,000, officials said. A charity spokeswoman said the files were retrieved and no lives were put in jeopardy.”

This kind of action isn’t new; software ‘bombs’ and bugs have been planted with the threat of activation and disgruntled employees have held company information hostage as bargaining chips. But obviously, as damaging as these are, there’s no comparison to the employee who returns with a gun and starts shooting.

Sometimes the action is obvious, but when it’s more subtle, as in hostage information, managers often find themselves giving ex-employees the benefit of the doubt.

During a discussion with a group of CEOs recently KG Charles-Harris said, “But while I used to give people the benefit of the doubt about their awareness of their inherent prejudices, I have learned that they are most often aware of the consequences, but don’t care.  If one is aware of negative consequences of one’s behavior, but don’t care about the effects on others, it must be akin to maliciousness…”

Although I don’t disagree with KG, there are two prime points on which I wanted the group to focus.

No matter how brilliant an interviewer you are or what additional resources you utilize there’s no guarantee that at some point you won’t find yourself in this situation. People aren’t open books and more importantly they often act out from stresses and slights—whether real or imagined—so it’s not worth beating yourself up unless you consciously ignored red flags during the interview process or reference check. If you did, then let it be a lesson learned and move on.

Preventatives, not paranoia, are a much more productive focus.

For example, there are dozens of free technology resources on the Net that people use every day with no thought for the ramifications of control.

Companies need simple policies, not bureaucratic nightmares, when setting up document and information sharing resources, such as whiteboards, Google docs, wikis, etc., with the goal being having whatever it is always in the company’s control.

This is critical because life happens in the form of jury duty, emergencies, accidents, etc., not just the rare vindictive employee, and your company needs to keep going.

I’m no expert in this area, so look for a guest post on preventatives soon.

Image credit: flattop341 on flickr

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under Business info, Hiring, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: bureaucracy, policy, sharing resources
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