…or something like that
Here’s a very curious tip we received from at least one source at Razorfish: employees are now required to use parent company Publicis Groupe‘s phone plan to access all work emails and calendars.
Essentially, the message is: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan…unless you want to do work stuff. Then you’re gonna need either a new corporate plan or a new phone.”
Full email after the jump.
This unusual consolidation move doesn’t necessarily give the company access to its employees’ personal messages, but it does require the proletariat to either hand their account over to PG, opt out altogether and check work emails on webmail (ugh), or accept a separate work-only plan in the interest of making sure that said messages only appear before the eyes of the intended recipients (and, of course, the NSA).
It’s a bit convoluted to say the least.
This decision obviously comes from the top, and the act of providing all employees with the new mobile plans reportedly comes at a significant cost to the agency itself.
While we don’t think certain tipsters’ fears of Publicis execs reading personal messages will come to pass, we do wonder why the Groupe deemed this heavy-handed regulatory move necessary–and we wonder whether it applies to all agencies under the PG banner.
Updates if we get them.