Keeping details about our clients and their companies private is very, very important to us. We cannot stress enough how important confidentiality is to our clients and our business.
The English Farm has non-disclosure agreements with our clients, and you have confidentiality clauses in your contracts (on page 7 under "General provisions"). Similarly, our students have confidentiality agreements with their employers. This means that we are protected by a double layer of confidentiality, in so much as students should not be telling us stuff, and we should not share it. Genuinely commercially sensitive information should never get to us, because our students should be sanitising what they say in lesson or what they write for homework. Sometimes a student will let something slip. Your best approach is that you know nothing.
It is also crucial to realise that some of our clients are rivals. While it is important to maintain and exploit our expertise in particular areas of business (e.g. consulting), we should not give our clients pause for thought or suggest that lessons are conducted in anything less than the strictest of confidence.
Having said that, there are certain details that we do know that we perhaps shouldn't, and other details we know that we certainly cannot share.
Things we should not know
We should not know any of the following (but may for a variety of reasons) or similar:
- details about our client's business that are propreitory or commercially sensitive;
- names of our client's clients and the work undertaken on their behalf;
- requirements for promotion or matters of internal policy related to English language skills and training or otherwise*; or
- names of co-workers and details about their deeds and misdeeds.
* For instance, we are not supposed to know required GBC scores and how they are connected to promotion.
Things we know but cannot share
We may know the following, but we cannot share this kind of information:
- details about a specific student's private affairs;
- personal information such as an email address, postal address, Skype ID, phone number and so on;
- work-related issues a student may have;
- the name of a student's company;
- a student's test score; and
- a student's real name, occupation etc.
How to deal with confidentiality
Technically, you can talk about a person or organisation in a way that makes impossible for a person to guess who you are talking about specifically. As long as anonymity is retained, you can say almost anything (if you are the type that likes to gossip).
For example, you can say "One of our clients is a consulting firm." There are many consulting firms in the world. It would be impossible for a person to know from that statement which consulting firm that it is.
You cannot talk about a student or organisaiton in a manner that makes them identifiable. For example, "One of my students recently returned from a year in Germany working at the Hamburg branch office of your firm, and he..." I think some teachers can guess who I am talking about. This student's co-workers would certainly know who I am referring to.
Furthermore, if a student chooses to share something personal and private with you, you are allowed to know. But it does not grant you permission to tell other people.
For instance, if a student voluntarily tells you their salary or some other confidential aspect of their work, the onus is on them. By telling you, they have foregone their right to confidentiality in this matter with you and only you. You cannot be held resposible for knowing something that someone has shared, but it does not give you license to tell others.
Bear in mind, that if you are asking for confidential information (like test scores) so that we, The English Farm, can better help a student, make sure that the student is aware that certain information will be shared only among staff for the purposes of improving the student's lessons. This information should be directly relevant and pertinant to what we do.
Example: "Would you mind sharing your test result with me? It will make it easier for me to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Is it OK if I upload that to your profile so that the other teachers can see it?"
Any other private information should be either not recorded or noted in the student's profile in such a way as to ensure that their privacy is respected. The test is whether or not the information is necessary in the proper performance of our job.
Example: Your student gets fired for negligence; make a note on their profile that they are "between jobs" (so that everyone is aware that the student is out of work). A student lets slip that they have a shoe fetish; let it go. Do not record anything.
Private information should be kept private. If you are not sure, don't say anything. If, however, it is necessary for you to know, broadly ask the student to volunteer the information.
For example:
- If you suspect that a student is a corporate client, but their profile does not show this or the name of their company, under no circumstances are you to ask them, "Do you work for [TEF client name]?" Instead, you should ask, "Would you mind telling me the name of your company?"
- If you are coaching a student in GBC and need to know what score they require, try to speak about it generically and do not let on too much about what you may or may not know about the specifics of the requirements at their organisation. Bad: "Oh, your goal is 2.1? Your firm requires that you get 2.1 in order to do international training, right?" Good: "Your goal is 2.1? What will that enable you to do?"
We cannot mention in print publically who our clients are. It is absolutely essential that if you see the name of a student or client or organisation mentioned publically anywhere on the site that you let us know immediately.
What parts of the site are private
Certain parts of the site are private, and so we can make note of certain things there within reason.
The private areas are:
- student profiles;
- lesson records;
- teachers' notes on lesson content; and
- homework.
You may make note in these places of any information that may be confidential but is pertinant to the proper execution of our job.