This article, written by attorney Jennifer Lyon, was originally published by Seacoastonline and can be found here.
Imagine you are setting up your monthly management meeting through a video-conferencing platform, such as Zoom, Webex, or Microsoft Teams. The meeting settings include options for recording a video of the meeting as well as permission for an AI-generated transcript or meeting summary. Those sound like good productivity tools, so you permit them. During the meeting, your team discusses an exciting new product that your company will be launching soon. You also discuss a potential offer to another new hire. After the meeting, you download the recording and the AI-generated transcript, but now what do you do with the sensitive information that was just recorded?
Many of us rely on video conferencing meetings to increase efficiency and connect with colleagues with hybrid work arrangements. The options to record and transcribe a meeting can be helpful, depending on the purpose of the meeting. For example, it may be helpful to record training meetings for repeated use in the future. Or perhaps a recording will enable an employee who missed an important meeting to catch up and stay informed. A meeting transcript may also make a video call more accessible for an employee who needs an accommodation. But the creation of a recording and transcript may not be beneficial in many situations. Here are a few considerations before your next recorded meeting:
Consent
New Hampshire has a strict “Wiretapping and Eavesdropping” statute, RSA 570-A, with potential criminal penalties if a person is recorded without consent. We are an “all party” state, meaning every person in a conversation must agree to a recording. Most platforms now play a notice at the beginning of a meeting or when someone joins a meeting, which is helpful. But if an employee does not want to be recorded, consider how your business would resolve that issue. Would an employee be excused from the meeting? Would you agree not to record it? Employers should be mindful of whether an employee feels coerced to consent to a recorded meeting.
Storage of Sensitive Information
Be sure to have proper systems in place to securely store and manage the recordings and transcripts, whether they are only stored locally or in a cloud-based service. This is especially important for meetings discussing sensitive information, such as employment issues or proprietary information. Perhaps a verbatim record of those topics would create more of a record than you need for your business and would create an unnecessary risk of divulging sensitive information and potentially forfeiting any trade secret protection. Where and how data is stored or transmitted could materially affect intellectual property rights.
Chilling Effect
If it is important in your business to cultivate free and open discussion, consider whether your team would feel that they can speak freely when they are being recorded and/or transcribed. Would they still feel confident that they can express any thoughts or ideas without them being replayed later? Clear communication of the purpose of the recording as well as how long the recording will be stored may help alleviate those concerns.
Cost of Duplicative Records
While the cost of storage videos and transcripts would vary on file size, consider whether the value that those recordings and or transcripts provide outweighs the cost of storage. If regular business meetings minutes are already kept in the normal course of your business, is a recording or transcript worth the cost of storage? A transcript effectively creates a second set of minutes, and you may want to consider whether you actually need a verbatim transcript of your meetings, rather than general minutes with action items and outcomes.
Accuracy
Auto-transcription is improving with AI, but there is still a risk that the transcript will not be completely accurate. You may want to weigh the time and cost of reviewing and correcting a transcript with the risk of having a partially flawed transcript. Also, if there is a discrepancy between minutes and transcripts, it may require additional time and costs to resolve those discrepancies. Be sure to have processes in place to account for potential inaccuracies.
Customer/Client Meeting Considerations
If you also work with clients virtually, you may want to consider whether you provide a video or transcript of those meetings. By sharing those recordings with a client, you lose control of how that potentially proprietary information is stored, shared, or disseminated in the future.
Legal Issues
If a dispute were to arise in the future, you would be required to retain any record related to that dispute, including any meeting recordings or transcripts. This can become burdensome if you have multiple records of the same meeting. Also, keep this in mind when discussing sensitive information that could potentially become discoverable. And of course, privileged legal discussions should not be recorded either.
In conclusion, while most meetings can be recorded, it does not mean all meetings should be recorded. Choose carefully!