Introduction
Legal and ethical issues related with employees monitoring at workplace are rising. Government has formed various laws to protect employees on various issues such discrimination, safety and security and equality. Employers also brought various changes at workplace such as advance technology, diversified workforce and effective & transparent processes. All such changes resulted in making: process more complex, increased policies and regulations to protect employees’ concerns. Not all these changes are welcomed by employees and employee monitoring at workplace gained lot of attention. Employee monitoring has become a topic of debate. This research paper intends to analyze legal and ethical aspects involved with employee monitoring at workplace. The paper further elaborates on employees’ privacy issues at workplace.
Statement of the Problem
New century made significant changes in organizations with information technology age which later changed to internet age. Majority of the organizations utilizes technology at various levels. New communications mediums increased employer’s risk of misuse of confidential information. Potential threat of misuse of information encouraged employers to establish system of employees monitoring. Employers implemented innovative technologies to watch all actions performed by the employees on company’s network. According to a study conducted by Yerb, almost 80 percent organizations utilize computer systems with internet. Accessibility to internet fulfill different professional and personal requirements of employees such as gaining information, official & personal communications, shopping, gaming and misuse of confidential information. Personal activities during official time forced employers to adopt available technology to monitor employees’ activities. Employee monitoring not only reduces the chances of information abuse but also help in controlling discrimination, harassment and other breaches related with workplace regulations.
Employee Monitoring: What is Right?
This is biggest problem in front of various organizations is whether they should monitor employees activity at workplace or not? If employers decide to monitor employees’ activities than what all activities are necessary to monitor? What type of monitoring practice should be adopted that is ethical and appropriate according to the laws? Monitoring employees is generally considered as unethical despite number of organizations monitoring their employees is rising significantly. According to present laws employers can monitor activities of employees at workplace. However, such practices are questionable because they considered as unethical and violate privacy of employees.
Employees monitoring de-motivates employees because it shows that employers do not trust their employees; it decreases their morals. Employees’ monitoring increases organization exposure towards different kinds of lawsuits related with watching employees’ personal data and information, e-mail and texts. However, regardless of such risk of lawsuits employers prefer to monitor employees. A study “The workplace privacy myth: why electronic monitoring is here to stay” examins varios benefits related with employee monitoring. The study revealed that employee monitoring benefits organizations in several ways by: improving employees prodctivity, decreasing discrimination & harsment related practices and reducing risk of information abuse. The study revealed that organizations considere that risk associate with lawsuist due to employee privacy is much lower than risk associated with lawsuits for sexual harsmets and various types of discriminations (Court & Warmington, 2004).
Literature Review
Marshall in his article provided detail on employees privacy in U.S. companies. According to the Marshall American companies monitor their employees by several means such as video recording, controlling internet activities & e-mails, and by hiring external party on company’s behalf to monitor all activities performed by the employees over company’s network. At the time when study was conducted very few statyes were require to give prior niotifiucation to its employeees about monitoring. However today majority of the organizations inform employees about monitoring before hand. According to a survey almost 83 percent organizations inform their employees about content and keystrok monitoring; 84 percent informs about monitoring of computer activities; and 71 percent about e-mail monitoring (American Management Association, 2007).
McEvoy in his research identified the major problem associated with employees monitoring is negligence of employees (McEvoy, 2002). The author mentioned thaty despite of prior informnation aboiut employees monitoring, several employeees perform objectionable actions. In present scenarion when internet has become necessity to perform business operations and tasks almost all of the companies are providing this facility to their employees. Implimentation of technology attracted lot of problems related information abuse and increased employee time spend on personal activities. To resolve these issues employers implemented employees monitoring system. This system is resulted in employees firing due to breach of organizational code of conduct, sexual harasment via sending objectanable content, use of inappropiate language, personal use of technology and breaching confidentiality of information (McEvoy, 2002).
Watson in his article mentioned that it is general tendency of human being and employees to desire freedom (Watson, 2001). No people wouls like being monitored. Several humanitarian organizations and activists alongwith employees oppose employees monitoring at workplasce. According to the author electronic monitoring has various negative impact on the workforce; it increases stress level of employees, does not allow them to take even genuin breaks, reduced job satisfaction, disbalanced work-life and overall decreased employees commitment towards their jobs. Monitoring sometimes resulted in developing hostile working environment (Watson, 2001).
Employee Moniotoring: Legal Issues
Over a period of time government developed and implimented several laws in order to adress changing needs of society. Similary new technologies also required new laws. For example when government introduced poostal system irt was difficult for people to rely on that but after formation of mail anti-tempering laws people started beliving on postal system. Prersently there is no proper law that regulates emmployees monitoring at work place. But there are other laws that regulate workplace monitoring according to the situations. For example sexual harsment case will be deal according to the criminal laws and racial discrimiunation according to employement law.
The Fourth Amendment provided gurantee to public to be secure in their places, papers, unlawful search & seizures. This amendment protect only government employees from monitoring. Private employees do not get covered under this law. Electronic Communication Privacy Act covers all types of digital communications including e-mails and texts. This act protects individuals from unlawful and intended interception in their communications. This law also protects stored information in digital form.
In employee monitoring situation, employer is provided with full right to check the data or information stored on company’s network. Company’s network and technologies are property of employers hance ewmployer can monitor those system without taking permission of employeees. Employer can search all material stored on their network. All these practices are increasing lawsuits against employer but it has become necessity for many organizatios to monitor their employees.
Employee Moniotoring: Ethical Issues
Monitoring employees at workplace is considered as unetical by various crtitics. It is now a topic of debate because it voilate employees right of privacy. Employees monitoring invite several ethical issues for example employees spend sigificant time in perorming their persoal ativities during office time, employees watch objectionable material, they play games and perform several other functions. It is also observed that employees do equity and other fiacial trading on official computers. Employee monitoring prevents all such persoal actions upto significant level.
According to employees, monitoring their activities is unethical because they have right to privacy. Employer exploring their persoal information is nethier right nor ethical. employees also said that strict monitoring negativly impact their efficiency as they are not allowed to take genuin breaks. Employees under strict vigilance feel high level of stress which resulted in atrracting various health problems. Employees also claims that monitoring ultimatly increased their sick leaves. Ethical absolutism theory belives in following uiversal standard while decidig right or wrong. This theory emphasize on human values over and above laws and justice. This theory does ot support employees monitoring at work place.
Utilitarianism theory emphasize on core value associated with action and outcome of that action. This theory believes in greater good for greater number of people. According to this theory decision should be made after evaluating situation and while taking decision it is essential to consider the benefit of large population. According to this theory employee monitoring should be implemented after doing proper evaluation of benefits and negative impacts of monitoring. Final decision should be made only if employee monitoring is beneficial for both employer and employee.
Employees Right to Privacy
It is biggest quuestion that are employees have any right to privacy while performing official duty. There are various arguments are in favor and against employees monitoring. According to some experts freedom is basic right of people and employee monitoring restrict that freedom. On the other hand experts mentioned that while working on employers property and getting remunertaion for the services employees rendered it is ethical to monitor employees activities. Before taking a decision on the subject it is essential to evaluate the pros and cons of the subect.
If employees are given privacy at the work place it creates threats to the employers because advace techology allow people to make all finacial transactions, shopping, gaming, downloading musin & games and performing various other objectionable activities from the workplace. It is also important to provide employees with such techology because of nature of work. Maintaing confedentiality of information is also responsibility of employer. Thereby, employee monitoring could be beneficial for employer. However it should not be done secretly. All employees should be informed about what kind of monitoring employer is doing and for what purpose. employer should convence employees that it is beneficial for them because it will provide them a fair, transparent and more protected enviroment.
Conclusion
After conducting above aalysis it is good to conclude that employee monitoring is legal according to preset laws however there is lot of debate on its ethicality. Form employers point of view it is ethical whereas from employees point of view it is unethical.
References
American Management Association. (2007). Retrieved Dec 5, 2013, from press.amanet.org: http://press.amanet.org/press-releases/177/2007-electronicmonitoring-surveillance-survey/
Court, L., & Warmington, C. (2004). The workplace privacy myth: why electronic monitoring is here to stay. Employment and Labor Law , 1-20.
Marshall, P. (2001). Are tougher laws needed to protect citizens? . Privacy under Attack 11(19) , 1-30.
McEvoy, S. (2002). E-mail and Internet Monitoring and the Workplace: Do Employees have a Right to Privacy? Communications and the Law , 69-84.
Watson, N. (2001). The private workplace and the proposed "notice of electronic monitoring act": is "notice" enough? Federal Communications Law Journal 54(1) , 79-104.
Yerby, J. (2013). Legal and ethical issues of employee monitoring. Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management , 55.
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