Rather flateringly, a client has asked if a new member of their team can come it and work as a placement with us for six months to learn the basics. Whilst I am also keen to forge relationships etc, one stumbling block is the data protection/privacy issue of letting a non-employee of ours have access to data own by our other clients. Obviously, I can get them to sign a confidentialty form but is there an issue re my other clients having the right to know that a non-employee will be having access to their data? Or am I being too a**l as usual?
Has this happened to any other forum members and can anyone suggest a solution?
thanks and have a good weekend
Pat,
I can't really see why it should be an issue, or if it is, many other companies would be falling foul of the same issue. As i'm sure you know many of the various forensic companies employ placement students to do various jobs for them. So given the NDA/confidentiality type agreements you'd no doubt have them sign, I can't see how your situation would be different to a full member of staff. I imagine this might depend on how you have any contracts with clients worded, and whether any of your work requires them to be CTC/SC etc vetted. But other than that, in principle, I don't see why not.
Rich
(obviously this being just my 2p from a non legal-eagle)
the difference is that, as I said in the first post, they would be a non-employee so we have no contractual control and they have no contractual obligation to our firm
Even if they are an employee of another company, there's no way I'd let them do placement without a contract of some kind, and what you raised would clearly be something to be covered in that contract.
Then as for that placement vs your customers, that's going to depend on how you worded your contracts with the customers. Often contracts have a specific cover for subcontractors, or whatever. If not, you're probably going to need to get a written 3 party NDA and/or waiver, or whatever.
Sounds like you need to get a lawyer before you take the placement, since nothing I said should be construed as legal advice and IANAL.
AFAIK, the problem with any kind of NDA (implicit as in the case of an employee) or explicit as in actual NDA signed with an employee or with an "external resource", be it a consultant or an "intern" or a placement like you described is it's practical enforceability.
See here (though related to ideas, inventions or trade secrets)
http//
Once you sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), you have entered into a legally binding contract. This allows you to share ideas with business partners while preventing them from passing this information on.
Unfortunately, the contract is only as good as the person signing it. If your partner breaches the contract, you can take them to court for damages, but this might be expensive and time-consuming. It can also be difficult to quantify the damages. If you suspect that your business partner may be about to breach the NDA, you can get an injunction, ie a court order preventing them from breaching the agreement, to prevent this from happening.
I mean (hypothetical)
You hire as emplyee Mr. Smith.
After (say) one year of work in your firm, he decides to trade, sell or anyway disclose some "secret" belonging to one of your clients.
You can fire him (if you can reasonably prove that it was him the culprit) and sue him.
Your client (the one that had his "secret" disclosed) will sue you.
Probably, even if you succeed in proving on Court that Mr.Smith actually stole the whatever and have him condemned to refuse damage, when you actually go for getting the money you will find out how he is completely broke and you cannot get more than a handful of Pounds, Dollars or Euros from him.
In the meantime you could be condemned by the "parallel" legal action of your client against you, and you (or your firm) will have to pay good money.
It is obvious that the client won't be anymore a client of yours (effective immediately after the "leak") so you may also lose a substantial portion of your income/amoiunt of work.
Let alone the bad publicity such a case would provoke.
What happens if Mr.Smith was not your employee but a "placement"?
IMHO exactly the same, only you won't have the satisfaction to fire him (as I doubt that you could initiate a succesful legal action aagainst the "other" client that proposed the placement).
It sounds like a no-win/no-win situation in either cases.
The only form of protection that you could expect to be able to get is possibly an insurance of some kind, which you should probably have anyway covering your employee's actions (or misbehaviours) and that you could supplement (at the placement "sponsor" expenses) to enclose in it the "external placement".
jaclaz
Sorry oops , double posted by mistake (Server Error 500 or something like that)
jaclaz
I think an Apprenticeship contract would be the solution. In the contract you should include some legal clauses related to the legal liability of the apprentice, just like any normal employee.