Privacy of an Employee in the Workplace - Assignment Example

Privacy of an Employee in the Workplace “New technologies make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees' jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are using the Internet. Such monitoring is virtually unregulated” (Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring, 2010) The current corporate world is dominated by the employer and the corporate governance or corporate power is increasing day by day. Most of the current employees were forced to work on tight schedules because of the immense pressure exerted by the employer at the workplace. The recent recession has actually increased the power of the employers and the employees suffered a lot because of that. Legal and ethical rights of the employees have been violated heavily by the corporate management in order to exploit the employees. This paper briefly analyses law, ethics and corporate governance at workplace. An employee can expect reasonable privacy only when he was engaged in a work which needs accuracy, thoroughness and logic. For example, consider an artist or designer who is trying to make a new design for a product. The interference of others might distract his focus and he may take more time to complete the design. Even though America have a well defined legal system, the laws related to privacy of the employees at workplace seems to be weak. Each state has different privacy laws and the standardization of privacy laws across the country seems to be a distant dream. Some employers try to exert control over the worker’s life outside of the working hours (Halbert and Ingulli, 2008, p.79). For example, some workers smoke during their lunch break. Most of the organizations provide at least one or two hours lunch break. Employees often make use of this break for smoking or some enjoyment purpose. But some employers even restrict such things at the workplace which is not a good idea. Employees should have the luxury of privacy at least at the break times. According to New York laws, it is illegal to fire an employee for engaging in off-hours sports, games, hobbies, exercise, reading, movie or TV watching (Halbert and Ingulli, 2008, p.80). Some organizations rate certain employee activities as legal or illegal based on the place and occasion when the action has been performed. For example, some organizations allow their workers to smoke in private places during their off-hours whereas smoking inside an enclosed office might be restricted. The activities of an employee should not cause any damage to the co-workers. Smoking in public places may cause problems to the non-smokers and hence organizations mostly restrict it inside the enclosed offices where lot of workers working together. A manager has every right to monitor the performances of the subordinates. For that purpose it is logical to use modern methods like electronic surveillance. For example, if a manager was able to monitor the dealings between a sales person and a customer, he can judge the performances of the sales person accurately. The manager can give proper instructions to the salesperson in case of some defects in his dealings with the customer. At the same time the knowledge of the sales person that the manager is watching his activities may create immense pressure on him. Susan M. Heathfield (2010) has mentioned some incidents in which she was able to locate the employees who were watching pornographic movies at work with the help of electronic surveillance system (Heathfield 2010). “Even unionizing and organizing activities may be conducted either on work property, work time, or using work supplied or reimbursed technology by the employees”(Rasch, 2006). Electronic surveillance is thus necessary to avoid such things at workplace. Employees claim that the electronic monitoring put them under dehumanizing pressure in which computers, instead of people, judge their output (Halbert and Ingulli, 2008, p.74). Computers are capable of measuring quantity rather than quality. But evaluation of a worker based on the quantity he produced need not be a good idea. Some workers produce more quantity with less quality whereas some others might produce less, but their products might be of highest quality. A computer which analyses the performances of these two types of workers may report that the workers producing most with less quality as the outstanding performers. It is important for an employer to get the things done rapidly with highest possible quality. In other words, the evaluation of a worker performance by human eyes and computer eyes may produce contrasting results. In short, it is illogical to use computer surveillance to measure the performances of the workers. But it can be used to monitor their activities inside the organization. The inclusion of innocent, unaware third parties in surveillance systems may bring more harm than the good. Employee and the employer engaged in a mutual deal at the time of recruitment of an employee. Only the employer and the employee know about the terms and conditions worked out at the time of signing the agreement. It is illegal and unethical to bring a third party in a deal between an employer and the employee. It is impossible for the third party to rate the performances of an employee as the third party may not have proper idea about the nature of the job undertaken by the worker. For example, consider two workers who were engaged in two different types of works; one in a software development process and the other in a data entry work. Software developments need lot of thinking and analysis. Even when the developer stays idle on his chair he might be thinking about the problems and the solutions of the software he is going to develop. A third party who is watching him, staying idle on his chair may report that he is lazy in his profession. On the other hand, the same third party may give good certificate to the data entry operator after watching his rapid data entry operations. Thus the third party surveillance can cause more problems to the organization in assessing the true performances of the employees. Conclusions There is no doubt about the importance of the rights of the employer and the employee at the workplace. But both the parties should respect the rights of others mutually and should devise strategies, not to hurt the interests of the others. Workers should have some amount of privacy at workplace, but they should not misuse it. The employer can use electronic monitoring systems judiciously to prevent employees engaging in unwanted activities at workplace during office hours. References 1. Halbert T and Ingulli E. (2008). Law and Ethics in the Business Environment. Cengage Leraning. 2008. 2. Heathfield S.M. (2010). Electronic Surveillance of Employees Pros of Electronic Surveillance of Employees. Retrieved 21, July 2010, from http://humanresources.about.com/od/technology/a/surveillance.htm 3. Rasch M.(2006). Employee Privacy, Employer Policy. Retrieved 21, July 2010, from http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/421/2 4. Workplace Privacy and Employee Monitoring. (2010), Retrieved 21, July 2010, from http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs7-work.htm Read More