As layoffs continue apace, a survey released on Monday shows what many companies fear--exiting workers are taking a lot more with them than just their personal plants and paperweights.
Of about 950 people who said they had lost or left their jobs during the last 12 months, nearly 60 percent admitted to taking confidential company information with them, including customer contact lists and other data that could potentially end up in the hands of a competitor for the employee's next job stint.
"I don't think these people see themselves as being thieves or as stealing," said Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute, which conducted the online survey last month. "They feel they have a right to the information because they created it or it is useful to them and not useful to the employer."
The survey also found a correlation between people who took data they shouldn't have taken and their attitude towards the company they are leaving. More than 60 percent of those who stole confidential data also reported having an unfavorable view of the company. And nearly 80 percent said they took it without the employer's permission.
Most of the data takers (53 percent) said they downloaded the information onto a CD or DVD, while 42 percent put it on a USB drive and 38 percent sent it as attachments via e-mail, according to the survey.
The survey also found that many companies seem to be lax in protecting against data theft during layoffs. Eighty-two percent of the respondents said their employers did not perform an audit or review of documents before the employee headed out the door and 24 percent said they still had access to the corporate network after leaving the building.
The survey was commissioned by Symantec, which offers software that helps companies protect against data loss by indexing database and monitoring for patterns of word combinations that might be used by exiting employees to steal data. The Symantec software also can monitor outbound e-mail for confidential data and alert IT if large amounts of certain types of data, such as Social Security numbers, are being copied to removable storage devices.
Correction, 12:50 p.m. PST: This story initially mischaracterized a statement made by John Challenger regarding the severity of recent tech-related job cuts. He does not expect them to be as severe as those during the dot-com bust. Also the percentage figures cited within the various sectors reflect the increase in layoffs last year compared with 2007, and not the percentage of jobs cut.
Job cuts in the tech sector increased 74.2 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year, as the industry was battered by an unrelenting wave of layoffs, according to a report released Thursday.
Last year, 186,955 jobs in the telecommunications, computer, and electronics sectors were slashed, according to the report by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
And the bulk of those cuts, nearly three-quarters, came during the last six months of the year, the report noted. That drove the tech sector to unemployment levels not seen since 2003, according to the report.
"Through the first half of 2008, it looked as though the tech sector might be one of the few areas of the economy to remain resistant to recessionary pressures. However, the economy's continued slide here and overseas saw consumer and corporate demand for technology products and services drop rapidly, and these firms were suddenly under pressure to make significant cost-cutting moves," John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in statement.
AT&T, for example, announced 12,000 job cuts last year, while Sun Microsystems unveiled plans to cut 6,000 positions, and Xerox 3,000 jobs.
Within the various sectors in tech, electronics firms saw losses of 73,447 jobs, an increase of 89.7 percent over the previous year; the telecommunications industry saw an increase of 72.5 percent; and cuts in the computer industry were up 61.3 percent.
And in the Silicon Valley, for just the month of December, the unemployment rate rose to 7.7 percent in Santa Clara County and 5.9 percent in San Mateo County. Nationwide, the unemployment rate reached 7.2 percent for the month of December.
And the forecast for 2009 is not looking much better.
"Cuts could reach even higher in 2009, as there is no evidence yet that the economy has hit the bottom of this downward portion of the cycle. We almost certainly will not see a repeat of the 2008 first quarter, in which tech cuts totaled just 17,345," Challenger said in a statement.
He added, however, he does not expect technology-related job cuts to be as severe as the dot-com bust, when 36 percent of all layoffs across a wide swath of industries came from tech.
Symantec will lay off an undetermined number of workers before the end of the year as part of a cost-cutting move in the economic downturn, a company spokesman said on Thursday.
The company, which gave guidance on Wednesday that was short of analyst expectations, plans a 4.5 percent cost savings in its workforce budget and will reduce the headcount enough to accomplish that, said spokesman Cris Paden.
Paden said he did not know how many employees would be laid off as a result, but said the layoffs will be global, will vary across geographies, and that no specific business units were being targeted.
"We are shooting for a specific (cost savings) figure. So whatever gets us to that figure" will be done, he said. The goal is to maintain soundness of Symantec's financials "given how unpredictable the economic environment is right now."
Symantec will start alerting employees within the next month, according to Paden.
The move is separate from an initiative started over a year ago but which is ongoing to outsource the IT operations to EDS, Paden said.
The workforce budget includes costs for salaries, bonuses, and benefits for the company's 17,500 employees worldwide.
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