Abstract
On a regular basis, business publications have covered the issue of privacy and compliance which means that these are significant factors in the new business which rely on information technology or use information technology to cover their purposes. The case of Biosport is unique because it must implement new policy in the area of information technology usage. Therefore, the area is quite diverse but significant for different companies at the same time. It is important to identify that regulation and compliance ensures the achievement of organizational goals and the better usage of organizational resources. Alternatively, lack of compliance means the failure to meet organizational goals and to continue trying to bring a resource usage policy in terms of information technology.
The importance of privacy and compliance is a key area of understanding that each firm requires in order to set policy on this area. For Boisport, is a research done so as to check the myriad of the privacy issues that do appear in businesses publications on a regular basis. The research considerations aspects included; aspects of privacy of cost, liability perspectives, as well as operational aspects. The involvement of stakeholders is a major part in developing a business’s services initiatives. In assessing stakeholders, these three sections are considered; assessing the needs, planning for the required actions, and mapping assets. Stakeholders are those people or even organizations that have a concern about the business; they are affected by the performance of the business and involve themselves in one or more ways with business issues at hand as well as they have vested interest to the business.
The stakeholders examples includes the managers, those individuals that get the services from the business (Customers), the suppliers of the goods needed so as to run the business, the creditors, those individuals who are employed, the unions, professional organizations involved in business performance. It is important to note that these stakeholders have different impacts to the business performance. An outcome of stakeholder identification is through a stakeholder`s register. In this register, every detail of the stakeholders is captured, which may include the contacts, titles, organizations and other important details of stakeholders.
The laws that apply in businesses have to be put into considerations. Every employee is required to know and understand the business laws and regulations. I would recommend that every business owner has to register his or her business. Before commencing in any business activities, every individual has to register the business’s name, and how it wishes to operate. Another recommendation is to get a license of the business one is operating on. This ensures that one is going as to the business’s legal obligations. One has to understand that the license or permit one gets depends on the goods and services the business wishes to offer. An example is a business that offers goods for consumption. Such a business needs a food business license. There should be a privacy act that shows how a business handles personal information that includes; disclosure of personal information to individual’s overseas, use of personal details for marketing purposes as well as the way of handling and processing of personal details. Another recommendation is for those employees who believe that they get bullied in workspace. Those employees need to have anti-bullying law so as to make them understand their rights. Use of independent contractors provides service to the business, thus the business can serve a wide range of clients at any particular time. Employees are recommended to understand that they cannot have unclear and unfair dismissal from work.
The use of internet while working should get limited. There should be a limitation on websites visited by the employees during work hours. The increase in the rise of social sites as well as increase in communication of workers is highly blurring the different lines between work and home. The surfing during work hours where employees may be browsing about weather, making traveling plans, as well as doing online shopping and sending lots of e-mails may lead to a slower rate of doing job chores where they are employed (Gill 8). Many employers need their employees to concentrate at work in their offices. During work hours, the internet should be used just for the cases of business not the personal matters. Judge John Spooner compared internet use as an equivalence of reading newspaper of even being on the phone during work. He concluded that employees can use the internet information as frequent so as to better their lives as well as for their work.
Apart from the mix of work and personal matters at work, the employers are getting more concerned and fear the loss of money as there could arise cases of some individuals getting salaried and they are not devoting their time in doing work well at their work space. A recent survey that was conducted by salary.com concluded that most employers waste a $759 billion every year due to the result of paying those employees who use most of their time at their personal matters. Another research done by the University of Maryland concluded that those individuals with access of internet at their homes devote their time for work rather than doing personal things over the internet (Gill 7). The research concluded that the workers devote an average of 5.9 hours to surf about work at their homes and only 3.7 hours per week to do personal matters. Martin Druyan concluded that even though every employee gathers in the office if there is no work or they are not forbidden from surfing, employees will always find themselves over the internet.
Devoting most of your time over the internet can get one in the problem of getting fired (Klopott 9). Monitoring an employee’s use of internet and emailing can lead to a rise of many legal questions. Use of emails and internet is a way of advancing the effectiveness of employees at the workspace. Due to the use of internet for personal matters, employers have begun to monitor the use of internet at workplace, as well as emailing. This is aimed to lower the time wasted at work time doing personal non-work activities. In addition, companies fear that some employees share the business’s confident details with their competitors.
If employees use their time in gambling sites as well as those sites that promote racial discrimination risks losing their work rather that even those who spend their time doing personal activities. I have a feeling that in order to avoid chances of getting fired due to the misuse of the internet and emailing one should always develop know that he is monitored (Gill 4). If one understands that the emails or the websites, he or she is accessing gets monitored he cannot bother surfing. There is application software that can be used to gauge the time individual wastes online. These applications may include toggle, slim timer, and color hart.
According to me, companies are supposed to introduce new telephone and internet usage policies so as to curb the high rising personal use of internet connection during work time. The policies determine which websites that employees can surf since they are work related as well as those types of websites that the employees are prohibited from accessing during the working hours. Use of internet enhances the work of employees as they sit at their cabins and directly interact with their clients and customers. Internet lowers the employees work load as well as it does help them in keeping records of the customers systematically, and they can retrieve the details by one click (Klopott 8). If companies do provide the policies hoping that the employees will follow them, the company’s performance will highly increase. The outcome will increase, and less time will be wasted while working hours.
After making the policies, the companies should always implement those policies properly. These policies should get based on sites such as pornographic sites, pirated sites, hacking sites, illegal sites as well as piracy sites, message policies and emailing policies. I don’t mean that employees should not surf while working hours, but I want them to devote most of their time at work during the working hours. I want the employees to get to understand the importance of the company’s time and use it maximum for company’s success (Klopott 3). If any employee is caught accessing the sites with prohibition policies, he or she has to get fired immediately. I want to make them aware of that so as to save their contracts from getting terminated.
The company must ensure that projects, business processes as well as personal data that it does handle are used in compliant with all the relevant laws (Wilde 4). The compliance checking is expected to be done at early stages of the business so as to check the rising issues such as of the legality of any course of actions that may be done. This helps in assisting the business performance at a later stage as the company grows. Compliance checking is part of PIA (Private Impact Assessment), and it checks the laws that affects the privacy and may lead to an organization going to even broader compliance. The public sector companies have to check on their obligations that they have on personal data that they have collected as well as any type of prohibition in that information. The private sector companies are supposed to check the industries basic laws (Wilde 3).
Documents such as code of conduct and privacy policy statements may be relevant. This is relevant especially when the company has a provision of course of actions they have to comply with them. The terms of a document that the company has provided have to be followed by every member in the organization. There also raises an issue with the public policy that might not be laws but are basically respected. A company that proposes a project is highly responsible for the survey of the laws so as to come up with the relevant (Wilde 3). Every other organization that is participating in the project has a mandate for their involvement in the project.
Professionals who have the relevant experiences are consulted so as to check the compliance with the privacy laws, as well as legal obligations, (Wilde 5). If the company has compliance with in-house unit, it might be of great importance to compliance checking process in full account. The following laws may be relevant to consider; Statutes that regulates activities such as education, public health, children’s safety, family law, telecommunication, archives and surveillance devices. For the government agencies, the provision within the statutes which governs their activities as well as programs is essential.
Works Cited
Gill, Jatinder. "How to Avoid Getting Fired over Internet Use." How to Avoid Getting Fired over Internet Use. 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 7 Nov. 2014. <http://gill183.blogspot.com/>.
Klopott, Freeman. "Should You Be Fired for Using the Internet While at Work?" PCWorld. 6 May 2006. Web. 7 Nov. 2014. <http://www.pcworld.com/article/125597/article.htmlhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/125597http://www.pcworld.com/article/125597/article.html/article.html>.
Wilde, Debbie. "Controlling Internet Misuse at Work." Technical Support 1.1 (2002): 3-6. Print.
