Enron and AI HR policies - a very natural link
Midway in my career, I worked for Enron. I joined that Fortune 7 company run by a bunch of very smart people, and for the first time in my work life I questioned intellectual capacity and ability to read data insights accurately. But never my moral compass.
Those questions led me right here:
Offering AI policy templates to protect employees.
Enron was an energy-trading and utility company based in Houston, Texas, that perpetrated one of the biggest accounting frauds in history.
For me, the data wasn’t holding up
I had glimpses that something was amiss in the internal and external trading data I saw a few times a week. Enron would trade 100 shares of bandwidth to Dynegy, and Dynegy would trade back exactly 100 shares of bandwidth to Enron. Week after week. Why was it always the same number of shares being traded? Was this really a market? I was just learning about ‘mark-to-market accounting methods’ so I defaulted to the notion that I just didn’t know enough to understand the (lack of) patterns I was seeing.
Enron's stock price mostly followed the S&P 500 for most of the 1990's. But in 1999, they announced Enron Online, an electronic trading platform that allowed buyers and sellers to trade energy-related commodities. Enron Online was used by almost every energy company in the United States. That year Enron’s stock increased 56%. And in 2000, with the announcement of the Broadband Operating System (‘the BOS’) - that had analysts literally running from the briefing room to alert their order desks - Enron's stock increased an additional 87%.
But after the fraudulent accounting was exposed, and the implosion that cost more than 20,000 people their jobs, their retirement savings, and their trust in working for a Fortune 7 publicly-traded organization, I had an experience that would set me on the path I walk today.
Questioning the BOS, being questioned for the boss
I was called into Joe Hirko’s attorney’s office to be shown my emails questioning the status of the Broadband Operating System (when - exactly - would it be released? where were we with progress on the BOS?), as his attorneys tried to figure out whether I should be deposed in his defense. Needless to say, given the content of my emails, I was not deposed. (He was later sentenced to 16 months in prison for wire fraud for false statements he authorized about the capabilities of the BOS.)
And I realized that as a Sr. Director in a 20,000+ employee, Fortune 7 organization, I was not properly prepared to understand the real-world ramifications of my company’s email policy – especially that anything I’d written could be used in a court of law.
I’m much less naïve / more enlightened about the need for clear policies and employee training around both policies and technologies we use every day.
Policy protection before all else
Which is why, at the very beginning of our journey at the AI Governance Group, I asked that we develop an employee handbook policy template for AI use. Our brilliant Carrie Giovine went above and beyond, and crafted two – one for prohibiting employee use of AI, and one for relatively permissive use of AI by employees.
These templates are freely available in our Resources section, and we encourage people to share them widely. They’re meant to help any organization write and train on their own policies, with recommendations for crafting policies that are complete, but not complex.
Protect your employees with proper policies. Protect your intellectual property with policies, data governance and employee training. Protect your brand with policies, training, data governance and transparency in how you use AI when you do. And use our templates to jump start the policy-making process. Please.
Don’t leave your employees’ AI journeys to chance
At AiGg, we understand that adopting AI isn’t just about the technology—it’s about doing so responsibly, ethically, and with a focus on protecting privacy. We’ve been through business transformations before, and we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Whether you’re a professional services firm, government agency, school district, or business, our team of experts—including attorneys, anthropologists, data scientists, and business leaders—can help you craft Strategic AI Use Statements that align with your goals and values. We’ll also equip you with the knowledge and tools to build your playbooks, guidelines, and guardrails as you embrace AI.
Explore our site for your free AI Tools Adoption Checklist, Legal and Operational Issues List, and HR Handbook policy templates. Or, schedule a bespoke workshop to ensure your organization makes AI work safely and advantageously for you.
Your next step is simple—connect with us and start your journey towards safe, strategic AI adoption with AIGG.
