Human Resources Issue - Coursework Example

Running Head: WORKPLACE PRIVACY Topic: Workplace Privacy Lecturer: Presentation: Introduction Workplace privacy is one of the issues that are raising concerns among human resource managers in the contemporary organizations. The employees’ rights to privacy are usually violated most of the times when the employer becomes curious regarding their involvement in private matters that may affect the organization. In other situations, an employer feels that an employee may be unable to accomplish tasks in the workplace because of personal issues such as religious issues, sexuality and physical health among other aspects of the employee’s privacy. There are laws that protect employees’ privacy in the workplace, but human resource managers tend to feel that some matters should not be kept private for the good of the organization. Human resource professionals need to understand the issue of employee privacy in the workplace so that they can be able to enhance employee satisfaction in the workplace. Knowing how to deal with privacy in the workplace can help them to avoid conflicts between the management and the employees as well as elimination of fear among the workers, which may hinder performance. This paper presents a critique of employee privacy in the contemporary workplace. It highlights some of the aspects of human resource management that have been generating conflicts in the workplace due to interference with workplace privacy by the employers. Some recommendations regarding how the employers should approach workplace privacy have been discussed. Historical Background of Employee Privacy in the Workplace Workplace privacy is not a new issue in human resource management. Since the industrial revolution, employers began monitoring the private lives of employees to keep track of the activities that would lead to the spread of negative information that would lead to worker’s strike. The capitalists would also use the private information regarding workers to know their association with labor unions, which were known to facilitate strikes among disgruntled employees. The law did not protect employee privacy in the workplace especially due to the fact that the industrialists used government support to quell discontentment among the workers. Workplace monitoring was pronounced in the turn of the 20th century. The Feudal lords were known to monitor their servants. Workers were monitored in the emergent industries during the industrial revolution, and the supervisors and foremen were trained how to collect private information regarding the employees. Henry Ford who was one of the prosperous industrialists during the industrial revolution was known for his involvement in employee monitoring. He used to make follow ups through his investigators to acquire information regarding the employees’ family affairs such as how they spent their earnings, their eating habits, standards of living as well as their behavior (Regina, 2004). Since the industrial revolution, workplace monitoring has continued to advance especially with the technological innovations. The use of telephone in the workplace facilitated emergence of new communication behaviors among employees. They could share information about their employers as well as private information about relationships. Employers developed strategies to monitor phone calls made in the workplace. Advancement in technology led to the introduction of computers and the internet, which was meant to make communication between the employers and the employees more effective. Employees began using the internet to search for opportunities in other companies, sending e-mails to other employees, as well as completing personal tasks that involve computers in the workplace (Hubbartt, 1998). These developments are evident in the contemporary workplace whereby employees use computers to type work that is outside their responsibilities in the organization, online business, pornographic sites, internet dating, job applications and chatting with friends among other activities that do not benefit the employer, totally disregarding the fact that the employer pays for the IT services and equipment. Concepts of Employee Privacy in the Workplace Employers are usually tempted to investigate personal information about their employees to ensure that they devote all their time towards accomplishment of organizational tasks. This usually happens when there is no trust between the employer and the employees. Stanton & Stam (2006) observe that employers monitor workers to ensure that the organization’s property is utilized properly and for the benefit of the company. In essence, when a company implements a strategy to purchase equipment for use by employees, there is usually a gap in production that has been identified and if the equipment is not used in the right way, the company may not accomplish its objectives. Employees are therefore monitored to ensure that they do not use the organization’s property for private business. For example, information technology equipment can be misused by the employees, which makes the organization to pay for expenditures that are not related to production. For example, internet connection is one of the organization’s properties that are largely misused in the workplace. Employees use it to communicate with friends, apply for other jobs, working online and many other private activities. The organization may be loosing rather than gaining from the IT equipment. Some employees may even be working online, which lowers the number of hours that they work for the organization. The productivity of employees is lowered as they are engaged in other activities that are not related to their responsibilities in the organization. Plsek (1997) observes the concept of productivity is a key driver towards the tendency of employers to investigate what the employees do in privacy. Many hours are lost in social networking sites such as facebook, myspace and LinkedIn among others. The workers may not accomplish tasks as they engage in online chats, viewing videos online including browsing pornographic sites. Apart from the hours lost in such activities, the employees lack morals and the organization’s reputation is lost especially when clients realize such behaviors. For example, a client may develop a negative attitude towards an organization if he/she finds an employee browsing a pornographic site, which may lead to the loss of customers. In regard to the use of e-mails, it is important to respect employee privacy in the workplace. An employer reading the personal e-mails of their employees without their knowledge demonstrates an abuse of their right to privacy (Stanton & Stam, 2006). However, in a bid to protect the integrity of an organization, the employer needs to ensure that such actions as exposure of classified information to unauthorized persons such as competitors by an employee are avoided. Disgruntled employees may expose the organization to competitors as well as agitate the other employees leading to workplace conflicts and strikes. They may also send secret information to law enforcement agents leading the organization in to lawsuits and other undesirable situations. Sexual harassment may also be detected especially for the female employees by their senior male counterparts in the organizational hierarchy. In the process of maintaining the organization’s integrity through employee monitoring, employers interfere with workers’ privacy rights thereby lowering their morale for work. The use of private information as a performance measure in the workplace is an infringement of individual rights. Some employers use private information posted on social networking sites such as facebook to investigate their employees’ sexual orientation, family background, friends and many other private issues (Acquisti & Gross, 2006). Employers do not need to ask the workers about their engagements after work. Such activities decrease employees’ trust in their employers, which affects the workplace relationship. Lack of trust leads to low productivity among the workers as they try to conceal most of the information. The fear and suspicion affects organizational productivity. Challenges to Organizations The issue of workplace privacy presents challenges to organizations in the sense that they are faced with a dilemma as to what the best action to take is. While it is important to safeguard the organization from unnecessary practices among the workforce that may lead to loss of productivity, interfering with employee privacy rights may also lead to mistrust and poor performance. There are laws that protect the rights of employees and the employee is obliged to obey them. Many governments have set guidelines on the tests that should be administered on candidates. They require the employer to maintain privacy on issues regarding the candidates. Asking questions that expose the candidate’s private life such as family relationships, sex life and such questions are unethical and prohibited by the law. Employers should try to be safe from such issues that can jeopardize their relationship with the government, which may lead to fines and cancellation of operating licenses depending on the gravity of the matter (Norman et al. 2001). Asking questions regarding issues such as religion in a state where there is freedom of worship and all religions being entitled to equal employment is unethical and illegal. Among the new challenges that organizations are facing is the issue of HIV and other chronic diseases. It is regarded as an infringement of privacy to inquire about an employees’ health status or the use of drugs. According to Roelandt (2008), the European National Consultative Ethics Committee recommended a ban on testing in 2003 on issues regarding to drugs in evaluating a candidate’s suitability for a particular job. This was inclusive of HIV tests. Such tests were viewed as unreasonable in job testing due to the fact that it would be difficult to establish whether the candidate is incapable of performing. While it is understood to be unethical to discriminate candidates on the basis of HIV status or drug use, there are certain positions that would put the life of such people in jeopardy, especially the positions that involve rigorous movements. The employer has the obligation of determining the level of risk involved in case the candidate is under medication, while exercising fairness in all aspects of job testing. In that case, the employer is justified to investigate private affairs such as conducting medical examination. Nevertheless, the private information should not be exposed to other people. As much as organizations are required to promote privacy, it is important to ensure that the employees are committed to the organizational activities and that ethical principles are adhered to. In the contemporary operating environment, organizations are faced with high competition and therefore they have to ensure that they remain competent by encouraging inventiveness among the workforce (Saiyadain, 2006). For new ideas to add value to the organization’s products there has to be secrecy to ensure that competitors do not imitate the idea before it is launched. This is a major reason why employees’ privacy in the workplace needs to be monitored to ensure that critical organizational information is not passed to undesirable destinations. However, it is recommendable to maintain harmonious relations in the workplace by giving the employees the freedom to privacy. Worchel & Deschamps, (1998) observe that when employees are allowed their privacy rights, they are motivated to please the management and may even not engage in private matters in the workplace. On the other hand, when they feel that they are denied their privacy rights, they tend to utilize the slightest opportunity to engage in private affairs, which may lower their productivity. The most significant approach for the human resource managers to do is to promote high commitment in the workforce by ensuring that each person understands what he/she needs to be doing at a particular time. They need to help the employees to plan their activities to enhance accomplishment of tasks. Working with a good plan can help to prevent engagement of employees in private activities in the workplace. Promotion of loyalty to the organization can also help to ensure that they doo not expose organizational information to competitors or other undesirable persons. They should be made to own organizational strategies, which makes them feel that when the organization is exposed to competitors, they are the ones who are exposed. Projections regarding Workplace Privacy in the Future Technological advancements continue to change the nature of the workplaces as well as the workers’ privacy issues. As employers continue to modernize their operations, the employees either tend to be exposed or covered in terms of privacy issues. They are exposed when employers adopt new technologies that are likely to monitor them in the workplace, for example the modern electronic monitors and CCTV cameras among others (Williams, 2003). They are covered when they are able to use the modern technologies such as the internet. For example, an employer may not access an employees’ internet enabled mobile phone. New technologies continue to emerge and the most important action for the employers to take in future is to allow their employees their freedom to privacy to maintain a good relationship that supports performance in the workplace. Moreover, employees have become aware of their rights and freedoms through the extensive social networking and they have their own expectations in the workplace. Monitoring needs to be minimal to encourage people to work willingly rather than just to avoid the employer’s scrutiny (Hersey et al. 2001). As companies continue adopting information technology for data storage, employee privacy may be difficult to accomplish since information sharing through electronic databases is becoming simpler. Private information regarding health status may be easily accessible by other people in future. Conclusion Workplace privacy is an issue that has raised concerns since the industrial revolution where employers used private information about people to determine their suitability for employment. Engagement in private activities in the workplace continues to increase among workers especially with the introduction of information technology and the internet. On the other hand employee monitoring has continued to develop over the years with technological advancements. This is usually conducted by employees to ensure that employees do not waste time in other activities outside their responsibilities. Too much monitoring lowers the morale of workers and generates mistrust in the workplace, which affects performance. Workplace privacy presents major challenges to human resource managers since even though organizations have to allow the rights to privacy for their employees; they need to ensure that they utilize their time solely for their assigned tasks. With continuous advancement in technology, workplace privacy may not be accomplished in future especially due to new monitoring technologies and information sharing. References Acquisti, A., & Gross, R. (2006). Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook. In P. Golle & G. 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Organizational Behaviour. India, Tata McGraw Hill. Stanton, J. M. & Stam, K. R. (2006). The Visible Employee: Using Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance to Protect Information Assets-Without Compromising Employee Privacy or Trust, Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc. Williams K. (2003). Understanding Media Theory, Hodder Arnold Publication Worchel & Deschamps, (1998). Social Identity, sage publications Read More