If you believe the article, they were able to tell whether someone was producing adequate value since they claim the investigation was into people that were not performing as expected. The data in question was one piece of the information.

I don't believe them. If they had low performers, Equifax could have let them go without the non-consentual financial rectal exam on the way out. The number of jobs is irrelevant, only performance should matter.

This is a political / marketing move, as they could have also done the inspection without publicizing it.

I was in car sales. Top performers were caught borrowing used cars for nights out, secretly loaning cars to favorite customers for long period of time, buying tradeins secretly off the books, crashing cars while basically driving recklessly while transporting company cars to customers or off-site facilities, and not fired.

Low performers were fired because they answered incoming calls poorly twice in a week.

So it IS possible top performers were allowed to have side gigs and not fired at Equifax.

100%.

This is an excuse. But, interestingly, it was an excuse for 2% of the people they investigated.

So apparently being a poor performer at Equifax, but NOT moonlighting, is not a fireable offense, since the other 98% weren't let go. Or they were, and this is just a propaganda piece in service to corporations (it is Business Insider after all). Either way, I feel, not exactly a great look for Equifax (like they have ever looked good), since either way it's still a waste of man hours spent to justify firing people they wanted to fire anyway.

> Don't punish people for being entrepreneurial, it's completely un-American

America has a long history of owners doing everything in their power to control, literally or by proxy, their workers.

It also has a long history of making sure "those people"/workers/etc know their place and stay in it.