International Workplace has been shortlisted for Best Ethical Data Initiative at the dataIQ Awards 2024!

I’m really pleased to see the work we’re doing to protect the privacy of learner data recognised at the data and analytics industry's most prestigious awards.

Our responsible data model has already attracted funding from Innovate UK, where it was described by assessors as “highly innovative in advancing more ethical approaches that place users in control of their data”.

It seeks to answer a difficult question: who owns learner data? The employee? Their employer? Both of them?

For a digital learning provider like International Workplace this is a vital question.

The companies who buy our training are our customers. But the employees of those companies - our learners - are also our customers.

We want to do right by both of them so that they both have control over the data generated through their engagement with us.

Recognising the importance of data sovereignty for learners is becoming increasingly salient as employers process more and more data about their workers.

In the workplace, what were previously analogue tasks often now use algorithms to process data generated by machine learning tools instead.

Here’s a good example:

Training a worker to assess the risks of manual handling used to be conducted by a human observer. Some companies now film workers instead as they carry out manual handling operations and use computer vision software to analyse their performance.

This will generate an assessment or recommendation based on algorithmic processing. Employees can find themselves disempowered by this process, sometimes referred to as ‘datafication’ - the reduction of human activity into data, realised as a new form of value.

According to an Institute for the Future of Work survey in 2021, two thirds of workers were not at all confident that they knew whether their employers used their data to assess or make predictions about their performance.

Our mission at International Workplace is to champion safe and healthy work through first-rate training, sound ethics and trusted learning technologies.

Putting learners in control of their data will be central to delivering on that mission.

We're thrilled that we've been recognised by these awards and look forward to the winners being announced in September.