Can office gossip be put to good use? That’s the question behind a new local web service,
Office Leaks, which provides an anonymous forum for company employees to express their views.
Founder Ryan Masanz came up with the idea after years of being a network services consultant. Traveling to over 100 companies in that career, he was struck by how often people expressed valuable, interesting opinions about projects or other people, but never went to their managers with those thoughts. At the same time, the managers would ask Masanz for his own opinion regarding operations, communication, and productivity.
“I felt like I was doing therapy,” he says. “I thought, what if we could remove that fear that people have about expressing themselves?”
Launched last April, Office Leaks is currently in startup mode, but already it’s becoming a robust forum, Masanz believes. Employees from over 500 companies are already enrolled in the site, with new companies signing up daily.
Not surprisingly, privacy is a top priority for the site, and Masanz goes to great lengths to make sure that anonymity is cemented into place. There are no backdoors into an employee’s account, and Office Leaks doesn’t keep any identifying information. “The less data we keep, the better,” he says.
Office Leaks is free for employees to use, but the site also invites managers and company owners to join by offering businesses the ability to sponsor forums with their employees for a monthly fee, without compromising employee anonymity. This provides sponsoring companies with several additional functions, like being able to make their community private.
So far, Masanz hasn’t had to install many filters, but as the site gets more popular, he anticipates that additional controls may have to be put in place to make sure that no one is betraying company secrets or infringing copyright. He says. “Our main rule is ‘don’t be evil,’ and that includes libel and trade secrets. Honestly, though, I’m surprised by how civil it’s been. People just want to be heard.”
Source: Ryan Masanz, Office Leaks
Writer: Elizabeth Millard