Configure misconduct monitoring with sensitive comments

As employees get used to using Peakon, their feedback becomes more detailed and constructive. Our partners have also experienced cases in which employees have shared information about instances of discrimination or misconduct. This requires immediate attention. One of the challenges of tackling misconduct in the workplace is that people leaders and managers are often unaware it’s happening. With this functionality, you will have access to real-time detection and notification of these cases. If you are analyzing your data, see Viewing and acting on critical feedback about misconduct. 

This article covers:

• Overview of sensitive comments

• How the detection of trigger words work
• Notification on sensitive comments
• Enabling sensitive comment platform monitoring

• Granting access to Sensitive comments

• Editing and adding monitored words

• Adding custom concepts and monitored words
• Multiple language support

Overview of sensitive comments

Sensitive Comments detects critical feedback in over 40 languages and then sorts it into one of four categories:

• Violent Criminal Behavior
• Safety and Wellbeing
• Integrity and Ethics
• Objectionable Behavior

Once detected, real-time email and in-app alerts bring the most serious issues to the attention of designated people within your organization. These issues need to be addressed carefully. Using the private notes functionality on Peakon, people leaders can use @mentions to collaborate and respond to critical issues in the correct manner.

Team leaders are able to view them from their “Comments” area on their Peakon dashboard. By default, Sensitive Comments appear above your Highlighted Comments. As with all comment categories, it’s also possible to filter only those comments marked as sensitive.

How the detection of trigger words work

Monitored keywords

A list of default monitored words will be provided by Peakon, along with an option to add any custom monitored words you’d like to add. Monitored words fall into the following categories, with each category containing a list of concepts: 

• Violent Criminal Behavior 

• Safety and Wellbeing

• Objectionable Behavior 

• Integrity and Ethics 

• Custom Concepts and Words 

Each concept also contains a list of monitored words, which can also be variations and synonyms related to a concept. These monitored words appear in red beside the concept name and will be flagged if detected in a comment either instantly or daily.

Any keywords that have been added to the “Monitored words” box will appear in red. Comments containing any monitored words will be flagged as sensitive comments. 

Stemming & false positives

Peakon will detect any monitored words on the list, but does not take into account the context the word is being used in. In addition to that Peakon also takes into consideration stem words. Taking “kill” as an example of a monitored word, all comments containing the stem word “kill” would be detected and flagged as a sensitive comment. So comments containing "killed", "killer", "killing" would all have the stem "kill", and therefore be flagged, but "killington" would not match, because it has its own stem - "killington".

It's therefore likely that false positives will be detected. It is up to those with access to sensitive comments to determine whether the word being flagged is indeed of a sensitive nature based on it's context. 

For example, if you have “Kill” as a monitored word and someone leaves a comment reading “We’re killing it in the sales team”, this comment would be flagged as a sensitive comment. In such cases, you can simply mark the comment as “Not sensitive” by clicking on the drop-down arrow on the comment itself - see section below for “Unmarking sensitive comments”.  

Notification on sensitive comments

When notifications have been enabled for sensitive comments, and a sensitive comment is detected, members of the Admin access control group with access to view sensitive comments will receive:

• An immediate notification on Peakon when a sensitive comment is detected

• A daily email will be sent if new sensitive comments are detected 

• For certain sensitive comments, an immediate email will be sent where there’s a risk of immediate harm to the employee or others (e.g. where suicide, gun, kill etc. has been flagged)

• A notification in their digest email (only during open rounds), which will also contain a link to the sensitive comments and some information about which keyword has been detected

Enabling sensitive comment platform monitoring

Account administrators can enable/disable the ability to see whether a comment is sensitive or not within the platform, by following these steps:

1. Go to Administration

2. Select the Data Settings and choose the Sensitive Comments tab

3. Click on the Sensitive Comments On icon to enable sensitive comments

Granting access to Sensitive comments

Whether comments are highlighted as sensitive or not on the manager dashboards is determined by the permissions that have been set in the access control groups. 

This permission does not disallow access to sensitive comments, but refers to the ability for access control groups to see these comments as marked ‘sensitive.’ If this permission is turned off, managers can still view comments with sensitive content but they will appear as all other comments.

1. Head to Administration.
2. Click on Access Control.
3. If you want to grant access to view sensitive comments click on Comments and select any option:
   - Read sensitive comments: Comments that are sensitive will be highlighted as such. When this permission is disabled, the comments still appear on the dashboard but they are not highlighted as sensitive.
   - Mark sensitive comments: ability to mark/unmark comments as sensitive.
4.  If you want to allow users (only for groups that have access to view "All employees") to modify sensitive keywords, head to Administrate and choose the option:
    Modify Sensitive comments: ability to modify sensitive keywords
5. If you want to allow users (only for groups that have access to view "All employees") to receive notification of new sensitive comments, head to Notifications and select  the option:
   - Receive sensitive comment notifications: get a notification when a sensitive comment has been detected

Editing and adding monitored words

The default concept names are non-editable, however, you can add or remove the monitored words in each concept by editing each translation: 

1. Head to Administration.

2. Click on Data settings and then click on the Sensitive comments tab.

3. Click on the drop-down arrow on the right of the concept, to edit. An option to Add keywords, variations and synonyms will appear.

4. Click on the “-” icon beside one of the default monitored words to remove a word OR

5. Type in a new word in the Monitored words box and select the target language from the Target language dropdown list.

Note: When adding a monitored word to an existing concept, we recommend adding the stem word as the monitored word, since variations will be detected automatically. For example, adding “kill” would ensure that comments containing “kill”, "killed", "killer", "killing" would all be detected as they all contain the stem word “kill”. If unsure of the stemming of a sensitive keyword, the option to add other versions of the keyword is also advised to ensure it is detected.

Adding custom concepts and monitored words

You can add custom concepts and monitored words to your sensitive words detection system. A new Custom category is generated, when adding any of your own custom concepts and words.

To add a custom concept and monitored words

1. Head to Administration

2. Click on Data settings and then click on the Sensitive comments tab.

3. Click the Add custom concept button, at the top right corner of your screen

4. Add a concept name: this is the area this concept is covering (i.e. money laundering) 

5. Add monitored words to the Monitored words box and

6. Select a target language from the Target language dropdown list for each word added

Multiple language support

All default monitored words are translated into these languages:

When adding your own monitored words, you will need to select the language of the word before saving. This also means that you'll need to add a separate monitored word for each language employees answer the survey in.

Adding a custom translation for a custom word

1. Head to Administration

2. Click on Data settings and then click on the Sensitive comments tab.

3. Find your custom keyword and click on Edit
4. Select the corresponding language from the “Target language” dropdown list and write your translation in the right-side text field

5. Click on the black “+” icon to add the translation to the word

6. Click on the green “Save” icon. The monitored word will then appear in red beside the concept name