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As a people manager you naturally end up holding sensitive information about your team. This page covers what you're likely to receive, what you can do with it, and what you shouldn't do with it.

This page is written for people managers. For step-by-step help with a formal SAR (subject access request), reach out to the Ops team.

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Family, medical, and financial information 🫶

TMs will sometimes share things that go beyond work: a parent's illness, a divorce, a diagnosis, money troubles, a mental health crisis. It usually comes up because they need time off, a flexible schedule, or some kind of support, and they're trusting you with the "why."

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What to do with it

• Only use it for the purpose it was shared for (organizing leave, adjusting workload). Don't let it colour unrelated decisions like performance reviews or project assignments
• If leave or an accommodation needs to be formalized, loop in Ops so it goes through the correct process. Share just enough for Ops to act
• Keep it to yourself and the people who need to know, usually just you and, if relevant, Georgie. Not your other reports, not your peers, not your own manager unless it affects their planning too (and even then, share the minimum)
• If you make a note for yourself (e.g., "checking in Friday about their mom"), keep it somewhere private and delete it once it's no longer needed. Don't let personal details build up in shared diaries, docs, notes, or Slack </aside>

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What not to do

• Don't share it in group Slack channels, team meetings, or with anyone outside the people who need to act on it, even with good intentions ("just so the team's aware and can be supportive")
• Don't ask for more detail than you need. If someone says "family emergency," you don't need to know what kind
• Once the leave or accommodation is sorted, there's no reason to hold onto the specifics
• Don't put it in writing anywhere that isn't necessary, like performance docs, 1:1 notes that others can see, or anything that outlives the situation
• Health information and other special category data never goes into an AI tool, including Claude </aside>

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🤔 Not sure about any of this, please ask @Georgie Roberts she is happy to help.

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Slack and meeting conversations 💬

Most of our day-to-day communication happens in Slack, and most 1:1s happen over a call with Kona (our 15Five meeting assistant) recording and transcribing. Both come with the same guidance: think about who can see or access something before it's shared, not after.

• Skip the instinct to use initials instead of names. On a small team it doesn't protect anything, and it adds a layer of theatre
• Keep the detail to what's needed. "Sarah needs Friday off, personal reasons" is fine. The backstory isn't
• If something needs more nuance or shouldn't leave much of a trail, a quick huddle beats a written message

15Five (Kona) 1:1 and meeting recordings 🎙️

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Kona joins and records/transcribes calls by default.

• Before: if anything private is likely to come up (family, medical, financial, performance concerns, a hard conversation), turn it off before you get into it
• Every time: start each 1:1 by asking "is it ok if this gets recorded?" What's okay to record can change meeting to meeting
• Mid-meeting: if the recording's running and something private comes up unexpectedly, pause and turn it off. It's fine to backtrack
• Afterwards: if a recording with sensitive content did get captured, let Ops know so it's handled properly and not left sitting in 15Five </aside>

Tools you use to manage your team 🧰

Everything above ends up somewhere: a note, a transcript, a doc, an AI prompt. As a manager you're handling more sensitive information than most people at Float, so which tool you reach for matters more, not less.

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• Approved tools only. Anything to do with your reports stays in approved tools: note-taking apps, meeting assistants, AI tools, and anywhere you keep 1:1 or performance notes. For AI, that means Claude Enterprise, 15Five, Kona or Google Workspace (including Gemini)
• Free tools and personal accounts count. A browser extension or a personal AI login is still a vendor we have no agreement with, and no ability to retrieve or delete data from
• You can't approve a tool for your team. If a TM asks, or you notice something in use that isn't on the list, send it to Ops rather than making the call yourself
• Already happened? Flag it early. Sorting out access and deletion is much easier in the first week than six months later </aside>

Check the ‣ before you use anything new. If what you need isn't there, ask via the #open-it-ops Slack channel and we'll assess it.

For AI tools, file a request in the AI helpdesk.

Performance management :15five-logo:

This covers 1:1 notes, review write-ups, feedback, goals, and anything related to performance.