In the age of remote working, employees' ability to email on their phone, join a Zoom meeting from their laptop, and Slack from their iPad has created a breadcrumb trail of companies' data scattered throughout employees' personal and company-owned devices. And while that, in and of itself, has created data governance headaches for employers, it is becoming even more complex to manage amid the Great Resignation, when it comes time to retrieve data from departing employees.

At the "The Great Resignation's Implications on Preservation, Collection, and Control of Employee Data" Friday session at the 19th annual Advanced eDiscovery Institute conference presented by Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C., speakers discussed some of the data governance challenges that the Great Resignation has created for employers and offered tips on how to keep track of "company" data amid expanding employees' data privacy rights.

1.  Data Mapping

Although employers can't predict when one of their employees will give their two-week notice, panelists argued that mapping data is one of the first steps companies should consider. "If you don't have a data map, I would suggest you start to create one," said Leeanne Mancari, e-discovery litigator and adviser and co-chair of DLA Piper's e-discovery and information management platform.