What Your Boss Could Learn by Reading the Whole Company’s Emails
When Andrew Fastow, the former chief financial officer of Enron, finishes a public-speaking gig these days, a dozen or so people from the audience are typically waiting to talk to him. Some ask about his role in the scandal that brought down the energy company. Others want to know about his six years in prison. After a 2016 event in Amsterdam, as the crowd was thinning out, Fastow spotted two men standing in a corner. Once everyone else had left, they walked up to him and handed him a laminated chart.
The men were there on behalf of KeenCorp, a data-analytics firm. Companies hire KeenCorp to analyze their employees’ emails. KeenCorp doesn’t read the emails, exactly—its software focuses on word patterns and their context. The software then assigns the body of messages a numerical index that purports to measure the level of employee “engagement.” When workers are feeling positive and engaged, the number is high; when they are disengaged or expressing negative emotions like tension, the number is low.
The two men in Amsterdam told
