Managing Human Resources (Procedural Justice and Ethics in Employee Relations,) - Essay Example

Employers often claim they are protecting the business from “theft, loss of productivity, lawsuits, avoiding violence and terror attacks” (Lane, 2003 p. 12). However legitimate these reasons are, employees’ privacy also need to be respected. The law does not protect employees’ especially private sector employees from infringement of their privacy thus they depend on their good faith and procedural justice and ethics. The main purpose of this paper is to devise guidelines to follow in determining reasonable compromise between company’s need to run its business and employee rights to privacy.

The paper will achieve this by first discussing the various ways businesses impinge on employee privacy. Secondly, the reasons behind employee surveillance will be discussed and the options employees have to protect their freedoms. Lastly, a set of guidelines will be drawn that can assist an organization fulfill its needs without necessarily undermining workers’ feelings of dignity and worth. This is based on the belief that if workers are informed of what is going on they can easily adapt and accept a little infringement of privacy for the common good of all.

Businesses especially with the advancement in technology have numerous ways of invading employees’ privacy. . In one survey held in 1979, 75% of respondents believed in individual basic rights to privacy (Bies, 1993). Some ethical dilemmas on workplace privacy are specific to industries while others are common to all companies such as web surfing. Some of the methods used by employers that invade privacy include: computer-aided surveillance, drug and alcohol testing, AIDS testing, generic screening, health screening, background checks, credit reports, personality tests, use of video cameras, and Global Positioning System (GPS) (Brown, 1996 p. 1237). These generate private information about employees which employers can use for business purpose.

Management is updated about employees’ activities every minute. Lanes (2003) argues that a certain amount of information and supervision is a necessary component of successful business. However, he also acknowledges that only relevant information should be sought and kept especially in an era when federal government has capability and will to use that information for public policy purposes. Why do employers keep surveillance of employees? Some argue they are protecting the company from theft and sabotage.

In this era of computer technology, employees have found ways of defrauding the company or divulging company secrets to outside world (Bies, 1993). As such, companies need to check what employees are surfing on the net, their emails, and what they do with company resources such as vehicles. Theft of intellectual property can e avoided by keeping close surveillance of employees use of personal computers. Another justification for surveillance is employee productivity. Many employees spend much of their time web surfing, talking on the phone, sending emails and playing