The sensitive data rule

Here is the rule that protects your team and your job: never put sensitive employee information into a consumer AI tool. Not performance notes, not compensation, not health or personal circumstances, not a named complaint, not anything from a private one-on-one.

Why it matters. What you paste into a personal AI account can leave your control, may be retained, and could be used in ways you never agreed to. A leaked performance note or a compensation figure is a privacy breach with real consequences for a real person, and often a legal one for your employer under rules like GDPR and various state privacy laws.

How to work safely without giving up the help:

• Strip identity. Replace names with placeholders such as Engineer A, and remove anything that could identify the person or the situation.
• Work on structure, not the person. Ask AI to improve feedback phrasing in general, then apply the wording yourself to the real, private text.
• Use approved tools for real data. If your organization provides an enterprise AI tool with a contract that covers your data, use that for anything sensitive — never a personal account.
• Know your data classes. Match the tool to the class of information, and when in doubt, keep it out.

The habit to build: before you paste, ask one question — if this leaked publicly, would it harm someone. If yes, it does not go into the tool.