A Healthy Workplace Is One That Is Free of Surveillance - Essay Example

A healthy workplace is one that is free of surveillance Introduction This paper will explore the reasons behind surveillance in the workplace, types of surveillance used in the workplace such as drug testing, CCTV, bag searches, surveillance in hospitals, as well as the different ways in which employers monitor employees, and whether a workplace is healthy without surveillance. Moreover, this paper will also highlight pre-work surveillance such as criminal record check, employers viewing Facebook profiles, and in-work surveillance such as monitoring emails, telephone calls, among other surveillance mechanisms. This paper will conclude by highlighting some of the pros and cons of workplace surveillance, citing a few statistics too while making comparisons between the UK, Canada and the U.S., besides exploring the various laws and legislation in place to protect employees with regards to workplace surveillance. Concept of surveillance Surveillance, usually conceptualized as the monitoring of activities, behaviour, as well as any shifting information associated with individuals with the aim of influencing, controlling, or safeguarding them, has been a pervasive development of the modern day society (Wood 1998, p.136). Surveillance has been defined as the practice of collecting and storing information, supervising activities through instructions or physical design, as well as using information to monitor the behaviour of individuals with the purpose of instilling discipline. Surveillance often incorporates a system of technologies and practices that enable behaviour monitoring and prediction through accentuation, visualization, collection, as well as processing of data concerning personal as well as group dynamics. Surveillance has become a crucial component of governments as well as law enforcement agencies that seek to promote social control by noting and monitoring threats while averting potential criminal activities. Technological advancements in the modern era of the information technologies have greatly revolutionized surveillance due to the invention of intelligent surveillance systems and mechanisms of monitoring individuals’ behaviour and activities. Surveillance at the workplace is not a new phenomenon since it has been at the core of capitalist work and organization (Thompson 2003, p.138); however, the increased interest in the question of surveillance in the present day has partly been spurred by the accentuated scale and intensity of surveillance. The electronic nature of surveillance coupled with its pervasiveness across varied social contexts such as in homes, at workplaces and in communities is nothing short of a phenomenon of the present day’s information technology era. Irrespective of the purpose of, or intention of surveillance, the mere presence of surveillance systems destroy social relations by accentuating uncertainty at the workplace, prompting shifts in visibility while profiling individuals and their respective firms into various distinct categories. Reasons for surveillance Numerous reasons have been cited as justification for monitoring and surveillance including employee or customer safety; employers have found incentive to monitor employees at the workplace due to the heightened attacks, robberies, violence, as well as the numerous instances of workplace safety mishaps, alongside their allied liabilities and damages (McHardy, Giesbrecht & Brady 2005, p.1). Remote worker monitoring systems track isolated employees for the purpose of identifying emergencies and guiding response teams through procedural emergency response; in this respect, employers cite deterrence, responsiveness, as well as enhancing the capacity to investigate as the multiple objectives for using monitoring measures at the workplace. The second reason for surveillance at the workplace is the confidentiality and trade secret concerns since employers are obligated to safeguard confidential information, particularly given that a vast proportion of IT-related crimes often emanate from within organizations. Over the years, many large corporations as well as government agencies have suffered great financial losses as a result of computer breaches through which proprietary information was targeted and successfully stolen by individuals (p.2). Workplace liability and investigations is the third reason for surveillance given that it is possible for legal liabilities to arise out of employees’ misuse or misconduct (Watson 2002, p.23); for instance, surveillance comes in handy in investigations into issues such as harassment, safety and theft. Surveillance is also implemented to maintain high network and systems performance at the workplace since a downed system can lead to low productivity due to lost hours across the workforce, as well as the loss of customers, profits as well as company reputation. Apart from slowed network and system performance, non-work related use of employers’ internet resources may potentially introduce viruses that may potentially attack thereby disabling the entire employer network while grounding operations (McHardy, Giesbrecht & Brady 2005, p.2). Employers ensure effective network and systems performance by monitoring their firms’ bandwidth traffic to minimize misuse by employees downloading and sharing heavy audio-visual files that slow down browsing speeds significantly. Surveillance of employees’ utilization of their employers’ computer network resources aims to promote employee productivity since some may spend a considerable amount of work hours surfing non-work related websites. For instance, the 2000 Angus Reid Group report indicated that on average, Canadian employees spent nearly 800 million work hours annually on personal internet use, which culminates to roughly two hours of non-work related internet use per week by all employees with internet access (p.3). Surveillance/monitoring legislation Overall, employers have often argued that since they own the computer equipment that employees use, they are entitled to monitor the manner in which the firm’s equipment are being utilized by their employees. In that respect, employers deploy workplace surveillance and monitoring discourage excessive personal use of computers, to avoid legal liability, to avert leaking of confidential information, as well as to maintain security of the entire system. The UK Data Protection Act of 1998 operationalizes the European Data Protection Order issued in 1995, which requires every organization to process the personal information of individuals in its possession fairly and appropriately (Warren 2002, p.446). The Act provides for monitoring at the workplace for the purpose of helping employers to meet compliance requirements while encouraging them to adopt good practices. Similarly, the Act ensures that employers strike the right balance between employees expectation of integrity of their private information and the justifiable course of action taken by employers regarding the running of their premises (Roth 2004, p.65). The Data protection Act does not prevent workplace monitoring since its effective implementation calls for substantial monitoring; nonetheless, this Act does require that in cases where monitoring results to adverse consequences, these must be justifiable by the benefits to the employer and other parties. The Act further recommends some good practices that address activities undertaken in monitoring, which may prove invaluable to both large and small firms; for instance, the Act provides a broad framework for managing data protection, besides outlining the general approach to monitoring. Precisely, the Act does recommend specific frameworks for monitoring electronic communications, video and audio monitoring, in-vehicle monitoring, as well as covert monitoring in addition to monitoring through third parties. Generally, the Act stipulates a general monitoring framework that is based on six core principles; firstly, the Act recognizes that monitoring workers is intrusive and that workers have a justifiable expectation that their personal lives will remain private besides expecting a substantial level of privacy at the workplace environment (p.66). Furthermore, the Act recommends that employers must have a clear purpose for monitoring workers, which must equally be justifiable by real benefits gained and the workers must be informed of the nature, extent as well as reasons for monitoring at the workplace. Other key legislations that address the issue of workplace surveillance include the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 and the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations Act of 2000; the Telecommunications Act authorizes the interception of specific telecommunications communications that would be curtailed by the first section of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Similarly, in addition to these key legislations, the 1998 Human Rights Act does play a crucial role in protecting employees’ right to privacy while recognizing that monitoring of employees behaviour by employers is entirely intrusive. Types of surveillance There are several types of surveillance levels including computer, telephones, cameras, social network analysis, biometric, as well as the radio frequency identification (RFID) and geo-location devices. Computer surveillance entails monitoring data and traffic over the internet; for instance, legislation in the U.S. grants Federal law enforcement agencies unimpeded access to all phone calls as well as broadband internet traffic such as emailing, instant messaging and web traffic for uncontrolled real time surveillance. Automated internet surveillance computers sift through the vastness of intercepted data on the internet for the purposes of identifying and notifying authorities of any peculiar traffic activities by use of key words or phrases; the U.S. spends billions of dollars every year through its National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI, which develop and deploy systems and mechanisms that intercept and analyse data intercepted from the internet. Personal computers in private homes as well as office computers become surveillance targets due to the loads of personal data stored on them by users, and the numerous surveillance systems applied by intelligence agencies and employers can easily gain unsanctioned access to such data. Employers often monitor email communications from their employees since emails distributed within networks are stored on the system even if they are deleted by their senders or recipients (Vallely 2001, p.8); by accessing email records, employers can print and review their employees’ communications. Employers also monitor employees’ internet activity over corporate networks as part of their surveillance through intelligent software that allows them to gain access to the computer screens of their employees. The practice of tapping telephone lines, whether official or unofficial, has become a pervasive phenomenon in many countries, workplaces as well as homes across the world; in the U.S. for instance, Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies can gain access to all telephone and VoIP communications through real-time wiretapping. Phone companies are often obligated under the law to submit information regarding their customers’ calling as well as internet histories; furthermore, intelligence agencies in the U.S. and in the UK have the technologies that enable them to activate cell phone microphones remotely and to listen into conversations taking place near their owners. Mobile phones can also be used to collect location information such as the geographical location of both the phone and whoever is carrying it, even when they are not in use. Surveillance cameras observe an area through video recording and are often connected to a recording device that is monitored closely by a security officer; the cameras are fitted with motion sensors that enable them to record footage only when motion is detected, and camera surveillance is utilized not only in security systems, but also in everyday surveillance at the workplace and in public areas. The emergence of centralized networks of CCTV cameras monitoring public spheres has further heightened camera surveillance today (Charlesworth 2003, p.218); CCTV cameras are connected to computer databases of people’s pictures as well as biometric data, thus, are able to trace the movements of people wherever they go. Employers are increasingly leveraging video surveillance at the workplace to monitor the behaviour of employees thereby eliminating any expectation of privacy that employees might have at the workplace. Analysis of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace have been utilized to extract useful information such as individual preferences, interests, friendships, connections, beliefs, thoughts, as well as activities, among other important details of individuals’ personal lives. Employers often utilize social networking sites to collect personal information on prospective or current employees working at their firms as part of pre-hiring or post-hiring surveillance programs that seek to profile individuals at the workplace. Biometric surveillance entails the use of technology to measure and analyse human physical and behavioural features for the purposes of authentication, identification or screening; some of the physical features examined include fingerprints, facial patterns and DNA while the behavioural features include individual’s gait and voice; facial recognition utilizes the unique personal facial configuration of individuals to identify them from surveillance footage. Behavioural biometrics utilizes affective computing to recognize individuals’ emotional state by examining their facial expressions, manner of speech as well as the tone and pitch of their voices, among other behavioural traits. RFID tagging entails using tiny electronic devices known as RFID tags applied to products or people to facilitate their identification and tracking using radio waves; corporations often tag their employees for the sole purpose of monitoring their movements while on the job. Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices are planted on vehicles so that their location can be tracked and identified at any particular time for numerous reasons but mostly, for surveillance purposes. Drug testing is also another pervasive form of surveillance being presently implemented at the workplace today, especially given that a vast majority of employers are convinced of the huge cost of having drug addicts at the workplace (MacDonald, Wells & Fry 1993, p.95). Employers are concerned that drug users diminish levels of productivity and potential profits since they are more likely to be unreliable and uncommitted to their tasks (Maltby 1999, p.4). Employees bodily as well as bag searches have also been intensified in certain workplace environments, especially at entrances into, and exits from the corporations, as part of the broad employee surveillance programs. Blurred lines of privacy zones The modern technological advancements have increasingly blurred the lines between the private lives and workplace lives of individuals; whereas privacy is regarded as one of the single most fundamental rights that should be accorded to individuals, it is itself a very elusive concept to define (Charlesworth 2003, p.217). Anyone attempting to highlight the general framework for the right to privacy suddenly encounters challenges given that this right is highly dependent on the circumstances in any given situation; that is, the extent to which the right to privacy is accorded and respected and the entire contingent activities vary greatly, from place to place, based on a range of factors. Taking this from the societal context, the implication is that the right to privacy varies greatly from one society to the other depending on societal norms; for instance, the right of privacy in a medieval village cannot be exercised in the same breathe as in a modern society, just like a prisoner and a jailer cannot be accorded the same right of privacy. Presently, individuals’ expectations of privacy in contemporary western societies vary greatly at different times of the day depending on their physical locations and the nature of the activities they are engaged in at a given time. The sharp lines of division between the well-established zones of personal privacy are completely non-existent at the modern workplace environment since employers have increasingly designed systems and mechanisms that put their workers on the radar around the clock (Charlesworth 2003, p.218). Employers are monitoring their employees with the aim of either directly or indirectly influencing their activities both inside and outside the workplace, thereby greatly undermining the employees’ privacy; the much sophisticated surveillance technologies at the employers’ disposal further accentuate the blurred lines between private and work lives. Presently, employers are using CCTV cameras to monitor the activities of their employees while working in the open-plan office layout besides recording their telephone calls, listening into their office conversations through listening devices. Similarly, employers monitor their employees’ key strokes logged, their computer screens, and their movements through sensors located in seats besides pinpointing their exact locations in the business premises through location badges (Fairweather 1999, p.40). Employers also threaten employees’ privacy outside the workplace by subjecting them through personality testing and all sorts of screening such as genetic screening and monitoring. In as much as employees may not like such kinds of assault to their privacy and mandatory intrusion into their personal lives, they are not left with any choice but to comply with these stringent workplace requirements as the preconditions for hiring as required by their prospective employers. In that case, workers often tolerate work-related threats to their private lives and privacy at the workplace, even if they do not like it, as a small cost for the enjoyment of the benefits of employment. Nonetheless, the issue of surveillance outside work raises even greater concerns, particularly regarding the legality of the employer’s intrusion into the private lives of their workers in their own free time away from the workplace. It would be assumed that an individual should be free to do whatever they like in their own private lives away from the workplace premises, but that is hardly ever the case since employers often infringe on their workers’ personal lives through their various surveillance mechanisms. Impacts of employee monitoring Employee monitoring at the workplace has often been attributable to numerous impacts on the working environment, especially if it is introduced without proper justification, consultation as well as controls. For instance, video surveillance at the workplace through CCTV cameras is often associated with reduced workplace morale and mistrust between employees and the management since it treats people as suspects (Nock 1998, p.193); for instance, self-reports of workers reveal that employees largely view introduction of video surveillance as a sigh of the management’s distrust of its workers. In this respect, the implication of video surveillance at the workplace, particularly when employers fail to acknowledge the importance of consultation prior to its introduction, is damaged relations between the management and its employees. Precisely, employees often perceive installation of video surveillance equipment covertly without consultations or prior notification as a total lack of trust, or a substantial violation of trust between management and workers. Furthermore, the broken trust between management and employees due to workplace surveillance inevitably accentuates the anxiety and frustration among staff; consequently, prevalence of tension at the workplace may further increase the likelihood of industrial disputation, diminished productivity as well as high staff turnover. Evidently, constant video surveillance of employees’ behaviour at the workplace does more harm than good particularly because it accentuates stress and anxiety levels; one study in the U.S. established that constant workplace surveillance and monitoring of employees’ behaviour is indeed the number one stress factor in many corporations. A vast majority of the workers being monitored often report experiencing boredom, high tension, extreme anxiety as well as depression, in addition to untold anger and high levels of fatigue; all these feelings and attitudes towards video surveillance collectively contribute to a total lack of job satisfaction. Workplace environments are crucial determinants of the quality of work life experienced by employees, thus, video surveillance does undermine individual preferences and feelings of responsibility, self-control, challenge, meaningfulness, as well as fairness, security and certainty at the workplace. The prevalent management notion at work today suggests that effective management practice should strive to establish trust and confidence in management-employee relations through effective engagement, which enforces a sense of responsibility and self-control amongst employees, thereby leading to high motivation and commitment to tasks. However, employee monitoring and constant surveillance is in contravention of this essential management theory of practice. Increasingly, it has been proven time and again that trusting relationships often foster organizational effectiveness while saving management time; even a flawed organizational work plan can be turned around through trusting relationships at the workplace, which allow facilitate effective communications while fostering the conditions that promote teamwork. In that respect, there is no doubt that indeed trusting relationship at the workplace, in absence of constant video surveillance on employees’ behaviour, inevitably foster the conditions that are crucial for organizational success in the longer term, unlike conventional beliefs that enforce justifications for constant video surveillance. Contrariwise, surveillance is the function of power from a distance since managers or employers are able to exert considerable control and influence on the activities and the behaviour of their employees through monitoring mechanisms and systems (Introna 2003, p.212). Pros and Cons of surveillance Workplace surveillance and monitoring may be highly contentious issues but still management seeking to invest in workplace surveillance and monitoring often draw their motivations from a number of perceived advantages such as ensuring that technology is used efficiently. Inappropriate internet and computer use by employees is one of the major challenges encountered by many firms today since abuse of internet privileges at the workplace during work hours reduces productivity of workers, thus necessitating surveillance. For instance, in the U.K., most organizations have implemented internet and email policies to discourage the prevalent incidences of employees’ misuse of corporate email and internet privileges (Vallely 2001, p.5). Workplace surveillance and monitoring also helps to prevent technology risks such as malware attacks and infections, which may result from inappropriate use of company network and internet resources. Personal use of the company internet and network resources highly predisposes the whole system to malware threats and virus attacks, which might be costly for the company in the longer run, yielding greater losses in business accordingly. Nearly 76% of U.S. companies monitor employees’ internet connections and almost 65% of U.S. companies block access to certain websites deemed inappropriate while 55% of U.S. companies retain and review email conversations to avert network risks (Wen, Schwieger & Gershuny 2007, p.185). Furthermore, workplace surveillance and monitoring may be beneficial for the protection of employees in some instances such as during a highly precarious safety or security state, when surveillance could aid in averting a potential security threat that could equally endanger both the employer and the employee. The advantages of workplace surveillance and monitoring notwithstanding, the health of workplace environment is highly undermined due to numerous disadvantages associated with these practice. The issue of privacy is one of the major concerns raised by employees regarding workplace surveillance and monitoring as they totally undermine the individuals’ right to privacy. Employers are infringing on the privacy of their employees by constantly monitoring their behaviour around the clock at the workplace as this largely does not auger well with workers, who value their rights to privacy. Workplace surveillance is also largely associated with decreased morale among workers due to diminished trust between an employer and employees; by interpreting surveillance as a sign of distrust, employees are more likely to feel less competent. Organizational surveillance has also been attributed to reduced workforce productivity due to the decreased workforce morale that is associated with constant workplace monitoring; depending on how employees respond to monitoring and surveillance, the impact on performance could be potentially be drastic. Conclusion In as much as workplace surveillance may be as old as the practice of work, the increasing prevalence of new forms of electronic workplace surveillance is a fairly recent phenomenon that has prompted widespread concerns and public outcry the world over. On one hand, employers have continuously insisted on the legality of workplace surveillance on the premise of protecting legitimate business interests while on the other hand, employees run the risk of losing their reasonable expectation of privacy from their employers due to widespread workplace monitoring and surveillance. A healthy workplace environment cannot be fostered in the presence of continuous workplace surveillance because it undermines individuals’ right to privacy while greatly hampering the development of positive social relationships that are essential for organizational effectiveness. Implementation of surveillance and monitoring at the workplace contravenes the prevalent management notion that effective management practice should establish trust and confidence in management-employee relations. To foster a healthy workplace environment, the management needs to ensure employees are engaged effectively to encourage positive feelings of responsibility and self-control, which are necessary in raising employee’s motivational and commitment levels. Healthy workplace environments are built on trusting relationships, which are essential for organizational effectiveness since it saves management time; evidently, an organizational work plan may be greatly flawed but coupled with trusting workplace relationships, the organization is more likely to succeed. Trust in workplace relationships fosters the development of effective communications in addition to the prerequisite conditions that encourage teamwork and effective participation as well as engagement at the workplace. On the contrary, mistrust between management and employees due to workplace surveillance eventually aggravates levels of anxiety and frustration among staff leading to a build-up of tension that may further increase the likelihood of industrial disputation, diminished productivity as well as high staff turnover. In that case, it is indeed undeniable that constant video surveillance of employees’ behaviour at the workplace does more harm than good since it accentuates stress and anxiety levels while encouraging mistrust tendencies between employees and their employers thereby undermining the establishment of a healthy workplace environment. References Charlesworth, A. (2003).Opinion: Privacy, Personal Information and Employment. Surveillance & Society 1(2): 217-222. Fairweather, N.B. (1999). Surveillance in employment: The case of teleworking. Journal of Business Ethics, 22(1), 39-49.  Introna, L. (2003). Opinion: Workplace Surveillance ‘is’ Unethical and Unfair. 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