In Our Employer We Trust: Mental Models of Office Workers’ Privacy Perceptions

Tolsdorf, Jan; Dehling, Florian

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-54455-3_9

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The factual knowledge of the data kept by employers is limited [69]. However, employees have been shown to express satisfaction with the granting of indirect consent by providing or withholding requested data on the basis of a "relevancy" criterion for determining their suitability [65,69]. Data may be deliberately withheld when employees anticipate benefits or fear adverse consequences [9,61].…”

Section: Information Privacy At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring mental models of the right to informational self-determination of office workers in Germany

Tolsdorf

Dehling

Reinhardt

et al. 2021

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

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Applied privacy research has so far focused mainly on consumer relations in private life. Privacy in the context of employment relationships is less well studied, although it is subject to the same legal privacy framework in Europe. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has strengthened employees’ right to privacy by obliging that employers provide transparency and intervention mechanisms. For such mechanisms to be effective, employees must have a sound understanding of their functions and value. We explored possible boundaries by conducting a semi-structured interview study with 27 office workers in Germany and elicited mental models of the right to informational self-determination, which is the European proxy for the right to privacy. We provide insights into (1) perceptions of different categories of data, (2) familiarity with the legal framework regarding expectations for privacy controls, and (3) awareness of data processing, data flow, safeguards, and threat models. We found that legal terms often used in privacy policies used to describe categories of data are misleading. We further identified three groups of mental models that differ in their privacy control requirements and willingness to accept restrictions on their privacy rights. We also found ignorance about actual data flow, processing, and safeguard implementation. Participants’ mindsets were shaped by their faith in organizational and technical measures to protect privacy. Employers and developers may benefit from our contributions by understanding the types of privacy controls desired by office workers and the challenges to be considered when conceptualizing and designing usable privacy protections in the workplace.

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Section: Information Privacy At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Employees may perceive an invasion of their privacy if employers' actual data processing do not meet their expectations. Whether or not the release of personal data by employers to others without the consent of employees constitutes an invasion of privacy remains a topic of academic debate [64,65,69].…”

Section: Information Privacy At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring mental models of the right to informational self-determination of office workers in Germany

Tolsdorf

Dehling

Reinhardt

et al. 2021

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Trust has an opposite effect to risk beliefs [10] and recent studies indicate that office workers in Germany trust their employers in the processing of their personal data [92,93]. We thus hypothesize that high levels of trust in employers (H2 a ) increase employees' willingness to disclose and (H2 b ) decrease their risk beliefs.…”

Section: Antecedents and Causal Modelmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…In addition, based on findings in online privacy research [24,48], we hypothesize that (H3 d ) high levels of collection concern increase employees' perceived sensitivity. Moreover, since office workers have expressed concern that some data could have negative consequences if used for purposes other than those intended [92], we expect the same effects for employees' concerns about the unauthorized secondary use of personal information by employers (H4 a , H4 b , H4 c , H4 d , cf. Fig.…”

Section: Antecedents and Causal Modelmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Nevertheless, employees were overall found to be willing to disclose personal data to their employers, despite being aware of potential privacy invasions [3]. They do so by assessing the relevance and suitability of the requested data [76,92,99]. Moreover, willingness to disclose can increase if employees believe to receive adequate gratification in return [58], and their preferences for sharing (sensitive) personal data vary by region [21,30].…”

Section: Willingness To Disclose Personal Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Employees’ privacy perceptions: exploring the dimensionality and antecedents of personal data sensitivity and willingness to disclose

Tolsdorf

Reinhardt

Iacono

2022

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies

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The processing of employees’ personal data is dramatically increasing, yet there is a lack of tools that allow employees to manage their privacy. In order to develop these tools, one needs to understand what sensitive personal data are and what factors influence employees’ willingness to disclose. Current privacy research, however, lacks such insights, as it has focused on other contexts in recent decades. To fill this research gap, we conducted a cross-sectional survey with 553 employees from Germany. Our survey provides multiple insights into the relationships between perceived data sensitivity and willingness to disclose in the employment context. Among other things, we show that the perceived sensitivity of certain types of data differs substantially from existing studies in other contexts. Moreover, currently used legal and contextual distinctions between different types of data do not accurately reflect the subtleties of employees’ perceptions. Instead, using 62 different data elements, we identified four groups of personal data that better reflect the multi-dimensionality of perceptions. However, previously found common disclosure antecedents in the context of online privacy do not seem to affect them. We further identified three groups of employees that differ in their perceived data sensitivity and willingness to disclose, but neither in their privacy beliefs nor in their demographics. Our findings thus provide employers, policy makers, and researchers with a better understanding of employees’ privacy perceptions and serve as a basis for future targeted research on specific types of personal data and employees.

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