Make Sure Your Employees Watch What They Say

Monitoring the communication of your employees may not be your job, but making sure they know the communication that occurs why they are employed by your company may be used against them and the company in the future. And you certainly do not want communication like this to be reread during a Congressional hearing as this Dealbreaker article discusses:

Some Congressman, not sure who 'cause I missed his name, just brought up the following IM conversation between two S&P employees, to former residential mortgage ratings managing director, Frank Raiter, from several months back (no name check on the deal but surely the DB brain trust can hazard a guess):

S&P employee #1: By the way that deal is ridiculous
S&P employee #2: I know, right. That model definitely does not capture half the risk
S&P employee #1: We should not be rating it.
S&P employee #2: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.

Congressman: What do you think this means, Mr. Raiter?
Raiter: Um...I don't know...I guess a casual acceptance of these things.
Sean Egan (of Egan-Jones) chimes in: Perhaps that cow was particularly talented?

Wow...that is not the type of public relations you want for your company.